Eileen Wang, who resigned from the Arcadia City Council earlier this month, pleaded guilty Friday to participating in a propaganda operation orchestrated by officials from the People’s Republic of China.
On April 1 the District 3 councilwoman, who at the time of her resignation held the rotating mayor position, agreed to plead guilty to a felony count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.
Sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 6, when she could receive a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
Wang admitted that she and her fiance at the time — Yaoning Sun, 65, of Chino Hills — operated the website U.S. News Center. Their target-audience was the local Chinese American community with directives from PRC government officials to publish articles favorable to Beijing. Neither Wang nor Sun gave prior notification of the propaganda activity to the U.S. government as the law requires, according to the plea agreement.
Sun, who also goes by the first name Mike, pleaded guilty to secretly acting as a PRC agent in October and is serving a four-year federal prison sentence at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles.
In one example cited in the plea deal document, Wang, 58, was directed through an encrypted message to publish an essay refuting reports by human rights groups of the abusive persecution and forced labor of the Uyghur population in China’s Xinjiang province.
The essay aimed to explain “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,” the encrypted message read. “Spreading such rumor is to defame China, destroy Xinjiang’s safety and stability, weaken local economy, suppress China’s development.”
Wang posted the article within minutes and made changes to the posting at the direction of a Chinese government official over the next several months, according to papers filed in LA federal court.
Additional evidence in the federal case included a November 2021 communication between Wang and John Chen, “a high-level member of the PRC intelligence apparatus, who regularly attended elite Chinese Communist Party functions, including military parades, and met personally with PRC President Xi Jinping,” according to court documents. “Wang asked Chen to post a ‘news’ article from her website, and wrote, ‘This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send.’”
Chen was sentenced in November 2024 to 20 months in federal prison after pleading guilty in the Southern District of New York to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government and conspiracy to bribe a public official.
Wang released a statement through her attorneys following her resignation from the City Council.
“Events in Ms. Wang’s personal life — including her trust and love for apparently the wrong person who ultimately led her astray — require her to step away from public service,” said attorneys Jason Liang and Brian Sun.
They pointed out that her guilty plea “relates solely to Ms. Wang’s personal life — i.e., a media platform that she once operated with someone whom she believed to be her fiance — and not to her conduct as an elected public official. … She apologizes and is sorry for the mistakes she has made in her personal life,” the lawyers said.
At the time of her propaganda work, Wang was engaged to Sun, her attorneys said. She has said their relationship ended in spring 2024.
In November 2022, PRC officials ordered Sun to organize a campaign team to help elect Wang to the Arcadia City Council, according to federal prosecutors. Documents describe Sun as the campaign treasurer.
“We want to be clear: this investigation concerns individual conduct, and the charges are for conduct that ceased after Ms. Wang was sworn into office in December 2022,” City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto said in a statement following Wang’s resignation.
An internal review by Arcadia officials confirmed that no city finances, staff or decision-making were connected with Wang’s work on behalf of the Chinese government, Lazzaretto said.
He added that “all City Council actions are taken by the body as a whole and no single member holds unilateral authority. We have found no actions that require reconsideration or that are invalidated.”
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a May 11 statement, “Individuals in our country who covertly do the bidding of foreign governments undermine our democracy. This plea agreement is the latest success in our determination to defend the homeland against China’s efforts to corrupt our institutions.”
Arcadia council members are considering applicants to appoint to Wang’s vacated District 3 seat and said they would announce their decision next week.