New York Dems Received Thousands from Alleged Chinese Police Station Operatives

T op New York Democrats, including Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, received thousands of dollars in campaign donations from people alleged to have set up a Chinese police station in Lower Manhattan.

Jianwang Lu, one of the defendants in a federal case involving the illegal Chinese-government outpost, allegedly acted on behalf of the Chinese authorities to locate exiled dissidents on U.S. soil. Noting the effort to locate such dissidents, Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York,  said that the station “had a more sinister use” than Beijing claimed.

Authoritarian regimes’ campaigns to harass diaspora communities in the U.S. are often coupled with work to cultivate political influence, a senior FBI counterintelligence official told reporters today, saying that repression can go hand in hand with efforts to “influence or interfere in the political or policy process” in the U.S.

Through campaign contributions and banquet dinners honoring politicians, people with ties to the Chinese police station gained access to New York’s political class.

Lu, who also goes by Harry, and Jiangshun Lu, also known as Jimmy Lu and James Lu, were both leaders of the America ChangLe Association, a nonprofit group under whose auspices the station was allegedly established. They have donated over $30,000 to leading New York political figures since the early 2000s, the New York Daily News first reported yesterday, citing publicly available donation records.

Many of the biggest recipients of their donations are heavy hitters in New York City politics with close ties to Chinese officials. Hochul, for instance, has a longstanding relationship with Chinese consul-general Huang Ping and marched with him at a parade in Chinatown earlier this year.

In December 2021, Jimmy Lu donated $2,500 to Hochul, who at the time was gearing up to run for her first full term as governor. (Hochul’s office did not respond to National Review’s request for comment.)

Throughout 2019 and 2021, he also donated several times to Adams, who served as Brooklyn Borough president before winning the mayoral race in 2021. The New York City Election Board’s website shows that Lu donated $2,500 to Adams’s mayoral campaign. In response to questioning from the Daily News, the mayor’s office said that Adams campaign will return the money to Lu. In response to questions about the donation, an Adams spokesperson referred National Review to his campaign.

They gave even more money to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2016 reelection campaign, with Harry Lu contributing $1,000 and James Lu donating $4,950. James Lu also donated $2000 to Andrew Yang’s failed 2021 mayoral campaign.

New York State election data show that in 2016, James Lu donated $500 to the campaign of Yuh-Line Niou, a former New York state-assembly member.

Other recipients of the donations include NYC councilmembers such as Chris Marte and Sandra Ung. Harry Lu made a $350 contribution to Marte this year and gave $300 to Ung last year. He and James Lu have also donated to several failed candidates for city council, such as Hailing Chen and Yun Li.

City and state campaign databases also show that the two leaders of the America ChangLe Association donated most consistently to John Liu, who served as a city councilman and NYC comptroller before winning election to the state senate in 2019. Liu received over $14,000 from James and Harry Lu beginning in 2006.

A lawyer for Harry Lu, who faces federal charges in connection with the Chinese police station, did not respond to a request for comment. But FEC records show that Lu donated to at least one federal officeholder as well: Representative Grace Meng, a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, who received a $600 donation from him in May 2022, according to FEC data. A spokesperson for Meng’s campaign told National Review that she donated an equivalent amount to a local charity this week to offset Lu’s donation and that “her campaign prides itself on following FEC guidance.” Her decision to return the funds doesn’t account for a separate $1,000 contribution she received from James Lu in 2010, and the campaign did not address a question about that.

In addition to donating to Meng, Harry Lu was also pictured with her at a fundraiser she hosted on April 24 of last year, the Daily Caller reported, citing a Chinese-language news outlet catering to the Flushing neighborhood in Queens. That fundraiser apparently took place two months after the Chinese police station opened, but several months before the public knew about it. A spokesperson for Meng told National Review that she had no “personal relationship” with Harry Lu, but that she “likely encountered him at local community events,” adding that Meng “was unaware of any allegations against him until Monday’s news.”

Adams, Meng, and Senator Chuck Schumer — who has not received campaign contributions from either Lu — have been pictured with Harry Lu at political and community events in New York, according to the Daily Caller. During a March 2023 celebration organized by the Fujian Hometown Association, Adams was seen next to Lu in a photo posted to a Chinese-language news website. Schumer and Chinese deputy consul-general Wu Xiaoming were also present at that event. Adams, Meng, and Liu also attended an April 2022 celebration for the America ChangLe Association.

A spokesperson for the NYC mayor’s office told National Review that, “the mayor does not know this individual” and emphasized that he’s invited to and attends “dozens of events every week.  His attendance is either to show support for a local community or boost the city and does not constitute any kind of endorsement.”