It feels like California is the People's Republic of China's (PRC) espionage playground. There's been more than one rogue Chinese bio lab filled with germs, bugs, and diseases busted by law enforcement. Chinese spy balloons lazily hoovered up intelligence over sensitive U.S. installations across America. Sen. Dianne Feinstein's spymaster chauffeur and body man probably heard all manner of secrets from her days chairing the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Judiciary Committee, and the defense subcommittee, but no biggie. Nobody was arrested. Eric Swalwell was a dim city councilor until he met PRC honeypot Fang Fang, who propelled him to a congressional post where he dished bad intel to the American public and who knows what to Double Fang. And now we have the continuation of the curious case of the after-school tutor-turned-Arcadia mayor and her personal Double Fang handler. Oh, excuse me: fiancé.
Oh my.
Chinese spying has been going on for decades in American universities and laboratories. But this story starts years ago, before 2015, when Reuters and other people were stunned to learn that a Washington, D.C., radio station was airing programming that could only be described as propaganda. How on earth could that be happening?
Neither its owner, a Shanghai emigré, nor anyone else at the company was registered under FARA as a foreign agent.
One of the CCP-approved programs was The Beijing Hour, “brought to you by China Radio International," Reuters reported. Other programming didn't identify the provenance of the information.
The company was run by James Yantao Su, who was born in Shanghai in 1970. Su eventually landed in West Covina, Calif., and became a U.S. citizen. In addition to running his broadcast enterprise, CRI, he also ran a company called EDI, another media operation.
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And that's where, as of Monday, former Arcadia mayor Eileen Wang's espionage handler and master propagandist, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, comes in.
Sun wooed and recruited Wang, an after-school tutor company owner, to run for the Arcadia City Council. Sun had high hopes for the go-getter to aspire to even higher office and helped bankroll her candidacy, appealing to the Chinese diaspora in news stories, saying, "You must vote for Eileen!" and urging them to support her campaign. It's unknown if the CCP donated, but, hey, they were bankrolling and directing the entire information operation, so do the math. Wang went to work for her honey pot's media company as well.
Wang's opponent in that first race was a Taiwanese emigré.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in the Central District — which still doesn't have a Senate-approved U.S. Attorney (great job, John Thune) — lays out some of the details of Wang's wrongdoing as an employee of the CCP bankrolled company
According to her plea agreement, from late 2020 through 2022, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 65, of Chino Hills, worked at the direction and control of PRC government officials and coordinated with U.S.-based individuals to promote the PRC’s interests by, among other things, promoting pro-PRC propaganda in the United States. Sun is serving a four-year federal prison sentence after he pleaded guilty in October 2025 to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.
Wang and Sun worked together to operate U.S. News Center, a website that purported to be a news source for the local Chinese American community. Wang and Sun received and executed directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content on the website.
For example, in June 2021, a PRC official contacted Wang and other individuals via the WeChat encrypted messaging application with pre-written news articles, including a PRC official-written essay in the Los Angeles Times that stated: “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. Spreading such rumor to do defame China, destroy Xinjiang’s safety and stability, weaken local economy, suppress China’s development[.]”
Xinjiang is where China enslaves the Uyghurs, where most of your Chinese cotton shirts are made.
In media reports, we learn that the 58-year-old Wang, who has been in the U.S. for 30 years, needed a Mandarin translator.
Honestly, you've got to admire China's tenacity and ability to develop human intelligence, which is sorely lacking in American spy agencies, according to a frequent guest on my podcast, former CIA Counterterrorism Center chief and former CIA WMD hunter in Iraq, Sam Faddis.
And I know a lot of people don't like President Donald Trump 45's Attorney General, Bill Barr, and there is ample reason. But one thing Barr got right was his Chinese Initiative.
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His China Initiative went after CCP hackers, trade secret thieves, and Confucius Institutes on American university campuses, and he pressured the Europeans to spurn China's Belt and Road Initiative, which would have allowed spyware throughout Europe.
When President Joe Biden took office, he got rid of the China Initiative, and Hunter got to keep the Chinese diamonds.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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