Southern California mayor resigns, will plead guilty to acting as agent for Chinese government

A Southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government, and has resigned from her city position, officials said Monday.

Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, was charged in April with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the U.S. government as required by law.

The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected on a rotating basis.

City manager Dominic Lazzaretto said in a news release that no city finances or staff were involved.

“We want to be clear: this investigation concerns individual conduct, and the charges are for conduct that ceased after Ms. Wang was sworn into office in December 2022,” he said.

Federal officials said she has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

Wang’s attorneys Jason Liang and Brian Sun said in a statement that she recognizes the seriousness of the charge and accepts responsibility for “past personal mistakes.”

“She apologizes and is sorry for the mistakes she has made in her personal life,” Wang’s attorneys Jason Liang and Brian Sun said in a statement. “Her love and devotion for the Arcadia community have not changed and did not waver.”

According to her plea agreement, Wang and a colleague, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, worked on behalf of government officials for the People’s Republic of China from the end of 2020 to 2022 to promote their interests by promoting pro-PRC propaganda in the U.S. Sun is serving a four-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to the same charge last October. He was also listed in campaign filings as the treasurer for Wang’s 2022 election campaign.

Wang and Sun operated the news website U.S. News Center, aimed at the Chinese American community, and were instructed by Chinese government officials to post pro-PRC content on it.

In one instance in June 2021, a government official sent Wang a link to a letter to the editor published in the Los Angeles Times written by the the consul general of the People’s Republic of China in Los Angeles.

The piece refuted reports of the persecution, forced labor, and abuse of Uyghers in China’s Xinjiang province, stating, “There has never been genocide in Xinjiang or forced labor in the region’s cotton fields or any other sector.”

Within minutes, Wang shared the link on her news site.

The U.S. and several other countries have declared that Beijing’s policies against the Uyghurs amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity.

At the time, Wang was engaged to Sun, her attorneys said. She has said that relationship ended in spring 2024. Their statement references “her trust and love for apparently the wrong person who ultimately led her astray.”

Wang has also communicated with John Chen, who also pleaded guilty to being an agent for the Chinese government and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

Wang is expected to appear in federal court Monday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles and plead guilty in the coming weeks.

Arcadia is located about 13 miles (21 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles. The city of about 53,000 is majority Asian and has a high concentration of Chinese residents.