Earlier this month, the mayor of Arcadia, a Los Angeles suburb where about six in ten residents are of Asian descent, resigned and agreed to plead guilty in federal court to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China. According to her plea agreement, Eileen Wang and her then-fiancé Yaoning “Mike” Sun took directives from PRC officials over WeChat, posted Beijing-supplied content on a website called “U.S. News Center” that presented itself as a source for community journalism, and reported view counts to their handlers. Asking a high-level PRC intelligence contact to circulate one of her articles, Wang wrote, “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send.” After a piece denying human rights abuses in the Chinese region of Xinjiang had drawn more than 15,000 views, the handler messaged “Great!” Wang replied: “Thank you leader.”
She now faces up to ten years in federal prison.
Comments