Eileen Wang, mayor since 2022 of a suburb of Los Angeles called Arcadia, was indicted in April for acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government between 2020 and 2022, according to CNN. She pleaded guilty, while resigning from her position. Eileen Wang admitted to acting at the request of Chinese officials, including sharing favorable articles about Beijing without prior notification to the US government, as required by law.
With her colleague Yaoning Sun, she ran the US News Center information site aimed at the Chinese-American community. According to CNN, Chinese officials had asked them to publish content favorable to the People’s Republic of China.
CNN cited an example from June 2021, when a Chinese government official asked Eileen Wang to republish on her site a reader’s letter written by a consul general of the People’s Republic of China and published in the Los Angeles Times. The letter refuted information about persecution, forced labor, and abuses against the Uighurs in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, stating “there has never been genocide in Xinjiang or forced labor in the region’s cotton fields or in any other sector.” Despite this, the US declared Beijing’s policies against the Uighurs as genocide and crimes against humanity.
According to the Times, the former mayor of Arcadia also communicated with John Chen, a Chinese spy living in the US. The US Department of Justice presents him as a “high-ranking member of Chinese intelligence services” who “regularly assisted at prestigious receptions of the Chinese Communist Party.” John Chen was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China in the US.
Eileen Wang left China to settle in California 30 years ago, according to CNN. The head of the Arcadia City Council stated in a press release that no staff members were involved. He emphasized that the investigation focuses on individual facts that occurred before Mrs. Wang took office in December 2022. Her lawyers stated in a press release that she acknowledges the seriousness of the charges against her and takes responsibility for her past personal mistakes.
