{"id":227924,"date":"2026-05-11T23:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T23:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/227924\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T23:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T23:55:09","slug":"eileen-wang-mayor-of-arcadia-accused-of-acting-as-chinese-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/227924\/","title":{"rendered":"Eileen Wang, Mayor of Arcadia, accused of acting as Chinese agent"},"content":{"rendered":"

The former mayor of Arcadia resigned after admitting to acting as an illegal foreign agent<\/a> of China in a federal plea deal unsealed on Monday.<\/p>\n

Eileen Wang agreed with prosecutors that she worked with the People\u2019s Republic of China to boost propaganda with a fake news website on US soil between 2020 and 2022. She was elected to Arcadia City Council in November 2022 \u2014 the city is located in the San Gabriel Valley within LA County.<\/p>\n

Wang, 58, worked with her then fianc\u00e9, Yaoning \u201cMike\u201d Sun<\/a>, on a web site called \u201cU.S. News Center,\u201d which claimed to be news source for Chinese Americans, according to court documents.<\/p>\n

But in reality the pair were carrying out Beijing\u2019s orders through the site.<\/p>\n

Wang and Sun \u201cexecuted directives\u201d from the Chinese government, posting propaganda designed to boost China, all while reporting back to their masters with screenshots showing how many people viewed the stories, according to the plea agreement.<\/p>\n

\"EileenEileen Wang agreed with prosecutors that she worked with the People\u2019s Republic of China to boost propaganda with a fake news website on US soil between 2020 and 2022. X\/Eileen1282<\/p>\n

\"ChenChina used her then fiance, Yaoning \u201cMike\u201d Sun to spy on Taiwan via the US. Department of Justice<\/p>\n

In one case, Wang\u2019s spymaster ordered her to post pre-written news articles, including a PRC official-written essay in the\u00a0Los Angeles Times, the plea deal states.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no genocide in Xinjiang; there is no such thing as \u2018forced labor\u2019 in any production activity, including cotton production. Spreading such rumor is to defame China, destroy Xinjiang\u2019s safety and stability,\u201d\u00a0wrote Wang\u2019s master, according to the plea agreement. <\/p>\n

Wang complied and her handler wrote back, \u201cSo fast, thank you everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another case, Wang\u2019s PRC boss commended her on page views received by a certain piece of propaganda. Wang wrote back, \u201cThank you leader.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Wang pled guilty to the federal charge at her arraignment in downtown Los Angeles on Monday afternoon. She faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n

LA\u2019s top federal prosecutor, Bill Essayli, said this is not the first time China has been caught trying to exert its influence in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cMs. Wang is just the latest to act as an agent for the PRC and it should terrify Americans that she was able to rise to the highest levels of local office in her city,\u201d Essayli said. <\/p>\n

Under the terms of the plea agreement, Wang admitted that that she acted under the control of Chinese officials to promote propaganda in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors\u00a0in 2024 charged Sun with conspiracy and acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. <\/p>\n

Wang said her relationship with Sun ended that year. Her ex-lover also served as campaign manager for her City Council run. The mayor of Arcadia is drawn from the Council on a rotating basis. <\/p>\n

Wang tried to distance herself from Sun in 2025, saying she \u201cnot responsible for the action of others,\u201d and would not resign from the post she then held on the City Council.<\/p>\n

Sun in February was sentenced to four years in federal prison<\/a> for acting as a covert agent of the PRC.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor years, Sun received and executed taskings from Chinese government officials, distorted our public discourse by disseminating Chinese propaganda, and surveilled groups in the United States that China viewed as threatening,\u201d said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg. <\/p>\n

Prosecutors say Sun and his PRC bosses sought to turn Wang into a political star in the hopes that she would achieve high office and further China\u2019s goals in California.<\/p>\n

Wang in 2024 told the Los Angeles Times that she had relocated to Southern California from China three decades earlier. <\/p>\n

She said mother was a doctor of Chinese medicine and acupuncture and her father was a physician in Sichuan province before he got a job working at the University of Southern California.<\/p>\n

The PRC has attempted for years to influence U.S. policy and governance through propaganda and espionage, prompting counterintelligence officials in 2022 to warn about China\u2019s increasing use of overt and covert means to influence policymaking. <\/p>\n

The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee in 2022 closed a two-year investigation into allegations that disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell had ties to an alleged Chinese spy named Christine Fang who volunteered on his congressional campaign.<\/p>\n

The committee warned Swalwell \u201cof the possibility that foreign governments may attempt to secure improper influence through gifts and other interactions,\u201d in a letter sent at the probe\u2019s closure. <\/p>\n

Federal agents last month raided Lancaster City Hall<\/a> and the homes of a pair of politicians from the high-desert town in an investigation of links between the two men and China-based electric-car manufacturer\u00a0BYD<\/a>, which is running America\u2019s first trial of electric buses in the city. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe concern was that the buses could be used for spying,\u201d said a person with knowledge of the probe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former mayor of Arcadia resigned after admitting to acting as an illegal foreign agent of China in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2136,827,2803,419,303,1016,9,11,10,87,89504,13882,58],"class_list":["post-227924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-california","tag-china","tag-court","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-los-angeles","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics","tag-spies","tag-spy","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}