Eileen Wang, mayor of Arcadia, faces up to 10 years in prison.
The mayor of Arcadia, California, has agreed to plead guilty to operating as an emissary to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Justice Department announced on Monday. Eileen Wang, after being charged with secretly carrying out the directives of a foreign government, resigned from her position as mayor of the southern California city.
Wang was expected to make her initial appearance Monday afternoon before a judge at the U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles and to formally enter her guilty plea in the weeks ahead.
Wang was voted onto the Arcadia City Council in November 2022 and was mayor when the charges were brought. The mayoralty rotates among the five-member council.
Arcadia is located about 13 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
Wang resigned on Monday following the announcement of the charges, according to a statement from Arcadia City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto. He added that officials confirmed that no city finances or staff were involved.
According to court documents, from late 2020 through 2022, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 65, of Chino Hills—her fiancé at the time and campaign treasurer—worked on behalf of instructions relayed by Chinese regime operatives.
The two ran a site called U.S. News Center, marketed to the local Chinese American community as a news outlet, but it was used to disseminate CCP propaganda, according to prosecutors.
In June 2021, according to Wang’s plea agreement, a Chinese official reached out through the WeChat messaging platform, distributing pre-written content, including an article published in the Los Angeles Times, that claimed, “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.”
Within minutes, Wang uploaded the article to her website and sent the link to the official, to which he replied, “So fast, thank you everyone,” according to prosecutors.
By August 2021, Wang was editing articles at an official’s request and forwarding screenshots showing how many views the articles were receiving. After a post showed 15,128 views, the official said “Great!” and Wang wrote back, “Thank you leader.”
Wang never notified the U.S. Attorney General that she was working as a CCP operative, and she never disclosed on her website that some of its content had been published at the direction of CCP officials, she acknowledged in her plea agreement.
