Mayor Resigns, Will Plead Guilty to Being Chinese Agent

The mayor of a Southern California city stepped down from office on Monday as federal prosecutors announced she'd been charged with secretly working for the Chinese government. The Justice Department said Eileen Wang, 58, agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, KTLA reports, a charge that carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison. The City of Arcadia said the actions described by prosecutors cover a period before she was elected. In a brief hearing Monday in downtown Los Angeles, per the Los Angeles Times, Wang followed the proceedings with the help of a Mandarin interpreter.

Prosecutors said Wang and an associate, Yaoning "Mike" Sun, 65, advanced the interests of the People's Republic of China by pushing Beijing-approved narratives through media aimed at Chinese Americans in Southern California, including a platform called the US News Center. According to court filings, Chinese officials sent Wang prewritten material via encrypted WeChat messages, including a 2021 essay denying abuses against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang. Prosecutors say Wang quickly posted the piece on her own site and shared it with others, then received thanks from the official. In another instance that year, Wang and three others distributed the same article on their respective news sites after coordination in the WeChat group, prosecutors said.

In November 2021, prosecutors said, she worked with a senior Chinese intelligence contact in California who had direct access to President Xi Jinping. That official, John Chen, earlier pleaded guilty and received a 20-month sentence in a related case. Sun was sentenced to four years in prison after his own guilty plea in 2025. Wang won a seat on the Arcadia City Council in November 2022; the council rotates the mayor's position. Her city biography, still posted Monday, describes her as the daughter of immigrants. "Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent," Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg said. Arcadia's government said no city funds, staff, or policy decisions were implicated.