Eileen Wang, the former mayor of Arcadia, Calif., pleaded guilty Friday to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government.
Military.com previously reported how Wang, the mayor of the five-person city council in Southern California, planned to plead guilty to the felony criminal charge. She had admitted in her plea agreement that she did not notify the attorney general that she was acting in the United States as an agent of the People’s Republic of China, nor did she disclose that she was posting content on Arcadia’s website at the direction of the Chinese government.
Wang was elected in November 2022 as part of a rotating city council. Federal prosecutors had charged her based on illegal conduct that occurred from late 2020 to 2022, though Arcadia city officials and Wang’s attorneys said her discretions concluded before she officially became mayor.
She stood and answered procedural questions on Friday from U.S. District Judge Wesley Hsu, according to the Associated Press, who read Wang her rights and made sure she understood the consequences of her plea. The AP reported that a Mandarin interpreter was present, though they did not assist Wang in the proceeding.
Wang faces up to 10 years in prison and three years of supervised release. She’s currently out of jail after being permitted to post a $25,000 bond, which will remain consistent until her Oct. 6 sentencing.
What Led to the Guilty Plea
Wang’s plea shows that she and Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 65, of Chino Hills—who was her fiance at the time, according to the AP—worked at the direction and control of PRC government officials and coordinated with U.S.-based individuals to promote the PRC’s interests by, among other things, promoting pro-PRC propaganda in the United States from late 2020 through 2022.
That was accomplished through a website called U.S. News Center that purported to be a news source for the local Chinese-American community. The pair would collectively receive and execute Chinese directives to push propaganda at the local level as a faux Chinese-American news agency.
Some of that propaganda included a PRC official contacting Wang and others through an encrypted messaging app called WeChat, pushing pre-written news articles to be posted on local channels that eventually garnered thousands of views.
One example was an essay in the Los Angeles Times that stated: “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[.]”
After completing the task at hand, Chinese officials provided a group chat reply with a message of contentment: “So fast, thank you everyone.”
A separate but related incident occurred some two months later, when Wang and three others in the aforementioned group chat shared links pushing the propaganda on “news” websites. It led to a PRC official thanking them for their “reporting.”
Fallout in Arcadia
The situation has implications on both the local and federal levels.
On Feb. 9, 2026, Sun was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison for acting as an illegal agent, including while serving as the campaign advisor for Wang in Arcadia. He was also found to have “closely surveilled” the then-president of Taiwan during her April 2023 visit to Southern California, “reporting directly to PRC officials on her movements.”
During the period of time when Wang and Sun engaged in these acts, they were engaged. That relationship ended in spring 2024, according to the AP, citing his attorneys. A statement they released after her resignation references “her trust and love for apparently the wrong person who ultimately led her astray.”
Even though the crimes were committed before Wang was sworn in as mayor of the city with roughly 50,000 residents, some locals thought the city was too dismissive of what were allegations at that juncture.
Acting mayor Paul Cheng said he and other councilmembers’ hands were tied at the time, per the AP, even though the Arcadia charter allows for the removal of a member if a crime conviction occurs.
“If there is a federal investigation that is in place, we are not investigators and to politicize an issue only impacts whatever federal investigation is out there,” Cheng said.
Attempts by Military.com to get comment from the Arcadia City Council never received a response.
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