BREAKING: Arcadia, CA mayor admits to acting as foreign agent for China, resigns

Eileen Wang, who served as mayor of Arcadia, California, has pleaded guilty to acting as an illegal foreign agent of China and has resigned from her role. This comes after her campaign advisor was sentenced in February to four years in prison for acting as an illegal agent. 

Per the New York Post, Wang pleaded guilty to the federal charge in her arraignment on Monday afternoon. She faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Wang admitted to working with China to boost propaganda between 2020 and 2022 with a fake news site in the US. Wang had been elected in 2022 to the Arcadia City Council, from which the mayor is selected on a rotating basis. 

First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement announcing the charge against Wang, "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."

Essayli said that Wang "is just the latest to act as an agent for the PRC and it should terrify Americans that she was able to rise to the highest levels of local office in her city."

Wang and her then-fiance, Yaoning "Mike" Sun, worked on a website that claimed to be a news source for Chinese Americans called "US News Center." The Department of Justice said the two "worked at the direction and control of PRC government officials and coordinated with US-based individuals to promote the PRC’s interests by, among other things, promoting pro-PRC propaganda in the United States."

The City of Arcadia’s website states that Wang resigned from her role on the Arcadia City Council and vacated her seat. The mayor is selected from the city councilmembers, and her replacement will be selected at the city’s next meeting. 

Speaking with the LA Times in 2024, Wang said she moved to Southern California 30 years prior, and that her mother was a Chinese medicine and acupuncture doctor and her father worked at USC, previously working as a physician in Sichuan province. Court documents in Chen’s case revealed that Wang had immigrated to the US from Chengdu, China in 1995. The mother of two has been rooted in Arcadia for around two decades, and previously ran an after-school program called Little Stanford Academy.