cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/55781166

When Arcadia [a city in the US State of California] Mayor Eileen Wang abruptly quit her high-powered job on the same day a plea agreement she made with the feds admitting to being a Chinese spy was unsealed, her wild confession made national headlines. But Wang is just a small cog in spy games that have a stranglehold in the affluent San Gabriel Valley city nicknamed the “Chinese Beverly Hills.” A ‘Los Angeles’ investigation shows that the Chinese government’s covert operations have roots well beyond City Hall that include money laundering, misinformation peddling and spying on Chinese dissidents.

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Eileen Wang immigrated to Southern California from her birthplace of Chengdu, China in 1995 — when she was in her late 20s — with her parents, who had both been medical professionals in China’s Sichuan province. Little is known about her early years as an immigrant. At some point she married, and apparently divorced, a local businessman named Henry Wang and had two sons. Education, though, was her business. She ran an after-school tutoring business for Chinese-speaking children called the Little Stanford Academy (how much of what she taught was being directed by the PRC is a question that has not been answered) and ran a separate entity known simply as Tutorial Services. Her political career was launched initially as a member of the Camino Elementary School’s Parent Teacher Association, and she soon met Mike Sun. The couple founded the American Southwest Chamber of Commerce, which gave them credibility in the business community of Arcadia.

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Wang and her fiancé Sun, a former officer in China’s People’s Liberation Army — which is the military arm of the Chinese Communist Party — operated a fake news website called U.S. News Center that was aimed at the Chinese diaspora who occupy a large number of the tony mansions in picturesque Arcadia and the entire San Gabriel Valley, a region home to over half a million Asian Americans — more than in Chicago, San Francisco or even Los Angeles. Only, Wang admitted in her plea agreement, the stories that they posted were controlled narratives that came directly from Chinese intelligence officials. One of those operatives was Riverside County resident John Chen, a Chinese national who prosecutors now call “a high-level member of the PRC intelligence apparatus.” He had maintained relationships in his motherland that included Communist Party leaders and even President Xi Jinping, who he had been photographed with, according to federal court records.

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When Wang was elected to the City Council in District 3, Sun celebrated the win with a report he would send to his handlers in China, federal prosecutors say, calling her a “new political star.” With his soon-to-be bride holding office, Sun, according to court records, became more brazen in his activities for China, and took meticulous notes of how he was helping his homeland that were later sent in a report to his PRC handlers. In it, Sun wrote about his work spying on the President of Taiwan during her 2023 visit to California, and “most of all” his efforts getting Wang elected.

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There is a long record of Chinese intelligence penetration of political networks in California. Former Congressman Eric Swalwell was accused of sleeping with a Chinese operative who volunteered on his federal campaign named Christine Fang, who has since fled the country. The reputed affair cost him his spot on the House Intelligence Committee, but he stayed in office until a cascade of allegations, which he steadfastly denies, came from women who say he sexually assaulted them. He ended his bid to replace California Governor Gavin Newsom, and resigned his seat in the House in April.

The late longtime California Senator Dianne Feinstein was forced to fire her longtime driver, Russell Lowe, who was friendly with Fang, after the FBI briefed the politico that he was a Chinese spy in 2018. By then, Lowe had been working alongside the senior senator for two decades.

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Then there is the strange case in Arcadia involving what a law enforcement source called a “baby factory,” run by two Chinese nationals, Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang. In 2025, Arcadia police removed 21 children, most under the age of 3, from their sprawling mansion after one baby was brought to an area hospital with serious injuries. The children were born to surrogate mothers, but the couple was listed as their parents. The case is now playing out in civil courts in suits filed by the surrogate mothers, whose babies are now in foster care, but no criminal charges have been filed. “The Chinese play the long game,” a longtime intelligence official told Los Angeles, calling the mansion a likely “spy factory.”

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The Chinese government’s interference in the U.S. has become so prevalent the FBI has a dedicated page on the bureau’s website called “The China Threat.” On it, there are five major cases taken down this year alone involving Chinese-sponsored espionage — not including the prosecution of Eileen Wang and her ex-fiancé Mike Sun, who was sentenced to two years in prison in February.

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On May 14, Wang was in a Downtown L.A. federal courtroom for a short initial appearance connected to her agreement to plead guilty to working as an illegal agent of a foreign government. That same day, in a case that is unrelated to Wang, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the arrest of a Mexican cartel leader connected to the brutally savage New Generation Jalisco Cartel, who was captured in Arcadia with 17 kilograms of powder fentanyl, one kilogram of cocaine and a loaded handgun. The amount of fentanyl, Bonta said, was enough to dose the entire population of Los Angeles.

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