A California mayor admits to having acted as an agent of the Chinese government

Eileen Wang, the now-former mayor of Arcadia, a city in the Los Angeles area, has resigned from office after federal prosecutors revealed that she agreed to plead guilty to acting illegally as an agent of the Chinese government within the United States. Her departure from the mayor’s office comes shortly before a planned summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Department of Justice reported Monday that Wang, 58, operated a website called U.S. News Center between late 2020 and 2022, which was presented as a media outlet aimed at the local Chinese-American community. According to prosecutors, the site disseminated content favorable to the government of the People’s Republic of China and responded directly to instructions from Chinese officials.

The investigation alleges that Wang worked alongside Yaoning “Mike” Sun, a California resident who pleaded guilty in 2025 to acting as a foreign agent and is currently serving a four-year prison sentence.

According to the court agreement, Wang admitted that she never notified the U.S. Attorney General that she was acting on behalf of the Chinese government, as required by federal law. The documents also note that she and Sun “received and executed directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content on the website, and sometimes sought approval from PRC government officials to circulate other pro-PRC content.”

One of the incidents cited by the prosecution occurred in November 2021, when Wang was seeking to publish an article related to China and Russia. According to the case file, the then-official wrote: “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send.”

Authorities also noted that Wang helped republish an essay written by Chinese officials that denied allegations of genocide against the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region, one of the most sensitive issues in relations between China and the West.

The case sparked strong reactions within the U.S. government. John A. Eisenberg, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, wrote in a statement: “Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent.”

He added that “it is deeply concerning that someone who previously received and executed directives from PRC government officials is now in a position of public trust at all, but particularly so because that relationship with that foreign government had never been disclosed.”

For his part, Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, stated: “By her own admission, Eileen Wang secretly served the interests of the Chinese government.”

Wang was elected mayor of Arcadia in 2022. The city, located about 21 kilometers northeast of downtown Los Angeles, has a significant Asian-American population; nearly 59% of its residents identify as Asian, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. After the charges were made public, City Hall confirmed Wang’s immediate resignation and announced that the City Council will soon elect a new mayor.

The former official’s defense team insisted that the activities under investigation were not related to her public duties. Her attorneys, Brian A. Sun and Jason Liang, asserted that the case pertains exclusively to “her personal life,” specifically to the digital platform she operated alongside a person “she believed to be her fiancé.”

The charge of acting as an unregistered foreign agent carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison, although the plea agreement could reduce the final sentence. A federal judge will determine the final punishment in the coming weeks.

The case threatens to further fuel mistrust between the two countries and reinforce Washington’s concerns about potential political influence operations orchestrated by Beijing within U.S. territory, ahead of the meeting between Trump and Jinping.