The latest example of foreign influence in the United States found a California mayor pleading guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
In recent years, TikTok has garnered a lot of concern over how the Chinese government may use collected American data. However, the flip side of PRC influence in the United States has proven just as worrisome and led to a federal felony charge against Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang for pushing propaganda on behalf of Chinese officials.
Monday, 58-year-old Wang pled guilty to acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government. Now the official who’d been elected to the Arcadia City Council in November 2022 faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.
“Individuals in our country who covertly do the bidding of foreign governments undermine our democracy,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli. “This plea agreement is the latest success in our determination to defend the homeland against China’s effort to corrupt our institutions.”
Sharing a report from the New York Post, FBI Director Kash Patel detailed, “Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang in California has been charged with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China in the United States. Mayor Wang admitted to acting as a foreign agent from at least 2020 through 2022 — promoting PRC propaganda in the U.S. and acting at PRC’s direction to promote their interests. She has agreed to resign from office and plead guilty.”
🚨 Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang in California has been charged with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China in the United States.
Mayor Wang admitted to acting as a foreign agent from at least 2020 through 2022 – promoting PRC propaganda in the U.S. and acting…
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) May 11, 2026
The director added, “@FBI and our federal partners continue to move aggressively to root out this kind of influence in American institutions all over the country.”
Further details shared by the Justice Department outlined how Wang worked with her then-fiancé, Yaoning ‘Mike’ Sun of Chino Hills, on a news website dubbed the U.S. News Center that peddled pro-PRC content at the direction of the Chinese government. This included a story that denied genocide and forced labor in Xinjiang.
“Thank you, leader,” Wang replied when she’d been lauded for the number of views on an article following her documentation of changes requested by a PRC official.
Wang was also said to have communicated with PRC intelligence member John Chen, who was previously sentenced to 20 months in federal prison, having pled guilty in November 2024 to acting as an illegal agent of the PRC and conspiracy to bribe a public official.
Likewise, Sun was sentenced to four years in federal prison for his own actions as an illegal agent of a foreign government.
As with Chen, who was charged in the Southern District of New York, Linda Sun, former deputy chief of staff for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), was slapped with multiple federal charges for her alleged actions on behalf of the PRC.
While her case ended with a mistrial, reported communications brought up during the trial included a text to Chinese Consul General Huang in 2021, where Sun said of then-Lt. Gov. Hochul, “The deputy governor listens to me more than the governor does.”
Sun had also said, “She’s much more obedient than the governor.”
“Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent,” remarked Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg in the case of Wang. “It is deeply concerning that someone who previously received and executed directives from PRC government officials is now in a position of public trust at all, but particularly so because that relationship with that foreign government had never been disclosed.”
The mayor of Arcadia, California, has been charged in federal court with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Justice Department announced today.
“Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the… pic.twitter.com/joIXV7xNQK
— National Security Division, U.S. Dept of Justice (@DOJNatSec) May 11, 2026
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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