It turns out that China’s infiltration of California politics went way beyond Fang Fang’s alleged seduction of Eric Swalwell.
According to The New York Times, Arcadia, California, Mayor Eileen Wang, a Democrat, resigned Monday after she was charged with being an agent for Beijing.
The mayor of the large Los Angeles suburb is chosen from the five-person Arcadia City Council on a rotating basis. However, when Wang took the mayoral job in February, there were already questions about whether she was associated with a 65-year-old Chinese national named Yaoning “Mike” Sun, who was sentenced to four years in prison less than a week after she took the job Feb. 3.
“He was previously engaged to Ms. Wang and had worked on her election campaign as the treasurer, according to public records,” the Times reported.
“When Mike Sun was charged and sentenced, he was accused of helping a politician he considered friendly to Chinese interests win a seat on the City Council. The population of Arcadia, in Los Angeles County, is about 59 percent Asian American, according to census data,” they noted.
“Prosecutors did not name Ms. Wang in the documents charging Mr. Sun, but other details in those court documents pointed to her as the council member who was discussed.”
She stepped down on the day that the Department of Justice announced she’d accepted a plea agreement on one felony count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
“Individuals in our country who covertly do the bidding of foreign governments undermine our democracy,” said U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli in the statement.
“This plea agreement is the latest success in our determination to defend the homeland against China’s efforts to corrupt our institutions.”
From the DOJ statement:
According to her plea agreement, from late 2020 through 2022, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 65, of Chino Hills, worked at the direction and control of PRC government officials and coordinated with U.S.-based individuals to promote the PRC’s interests by, among other things, promoting pro-PRC propaganda in the United States. Sun is serving a four-year federal prison sentence after he pleaded guilty in October 2025 to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.
Wang and Sun worked together to operate U.S. News Center, a website that purported to be a news source for the local Chinese American community. Wang and Sun received and executed directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content on the website.
For example, in June 2021, a PRC official contacted Wang and other individuals via the WeChat encrypted messaging application with pre-written news articles, including a PRC official-written essay in the Los Angeles Times that stated: “China’s Stance on the Xinjiang Issue – There is no genocide in Xinjiang; there is no such thing as ‘forced labor’ in any production activity, including cotton production. Spreading such rumor to do defame China, destroy Xinjiang’s safety and stability, weaken local economy, suppress China’s development[.]”
By November of 2021, Wang was communicating “with John Chen, a high-level member of the PRC intelligence apparatus, who regularly attended elite Chinese Communist Party functions, including military parades, and met personally with PRC President Xi Jinping,” the statement read.
The Times notes that the mayor “tried to distance herself from Mr. Sun in the months since he was sent to prison, but she faced increasing pressure to resign.”
Now, Arcadia is looking to select a new mayor from the City Council.
“The allegations at the center of this case — that a foreign government sought to exert influence over a local elected official — are deeply troubling,” said Dominic Lazzaretto, city manager.
And, while city finances and staff members weren’t involved in the indictment, that’s hardly any consolation. Here’s a city literally controlled by a candidate favored by Beijing, and it’s hardly even front-page news. In fact, it’s not even the most disturbing Chinese front activity in California; from stealing trade secrets in Silicon Valley to allegedly compromising the aforementioned Swalwell, once a candidate for the presidency and, until sexual abuse allegations made his run untenable, the establishment favorite in the California gubernatorial primary.
This is real, serious, and completely overlooked — especially by the same people who spent years trying to find a spurious connection between Donald Trump and Russia.
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