Southern California ex-mayor pleads guilty to secretly acting as Chinese agent

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - LOS ANGELES — A former Southern California mayor pleaded guilty on Friday to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government, admitting she promoted Beijing-backed content in the United States without notifying federal authorities.

Wang, 56, stepped down as mayor of the Southern California city of Arcadia earlier this month after being charged in April with acting in the United States on behalf of a foreign government.

Prosecutors said she worked to advance the interests of Chinese officials by sharing articles favorable to Beijing while failing to register her activities as required under US law.

Wang was elected to Arcadia's five-member City Council in November 2022, with the mayoral position rotating among council members. Federal authorities said her illegal activities took place between late 2020 and 2022, before she took office.

Located about 13 miles northeast of Los Angeles, Arcadia has a population of approximately 53,000 residents and a majority Asian demographic, including a large Chinese community.

Wang appeared in downtown LA federal court to enter her plea. The hearing included procedural questions from US District Judge Wesley Hsu to ensure Wang understood her rights and the consequences of her guilty plea. A Mandarin interpreter was present but Wang said she did not need their assistance.

Wang was allowed to remain out on a $25,000 bond until her sentencing on October 6. She faces up to 10 years in prison and three years of supervised release.

According to her plea agreement, Wang and her fiancé at the time, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, worked on behalf of government officials for the People’s Republic of China by promoting their propaganda on a website called US News Center.

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.

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 consul general of the People’s Republic of China in Los Angeles.

The piece refuted reports of the persecution, forced labor, and abuse of Uyghurs, the Turkic ethnic minority, 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 website.

The US 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. A statement they released after her resignation references “her trust and love for apparently the wrong person who ultimately led her astray.”

Residents and former Arcadia elected officials have said Wang should have been asked to resign after she came under FBI investigation for Sun’s case.

Acting mayor Paul Cheng said he and other councilmembers’ hands were tied at the time. The city charter only empowers them to remove a fellow councilmember if they’ve been convicted of a crime, he said, which Wang had not at the time.

“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.