Los Angeles-area mayor to plead guilty to acting as Chinese propaganda agent

LOS ANGELES, May 11 (Reuters) - The mayor of Arcadia, California, a heavily Chinese-American suburb of Los Angeles, has agreed to plead guilty to a federal charge of acting as a foreign agent of China, spreading propaganda on behalf of Beijing, U.S. officials said on Monday.

Within hours of the case being made public, Eileen Wang, 58, resigned from Arcadia's city council, along with the position of mayor she assumed in February on a rotating basis, according to the city manager's office.

She appeared briefly before a federal magistrate judge who instructed attorneys to agree to a date for a future hearing when Wang will formally enter her plea. Bond was set at $25,000. Monday's proceeding was conducted through a Mandarin interpreter.

In the 19-page plea deal filed April 1 and unsealed with the charging document on Monday, Wang agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count of acting as a foreign agent of the Chinese government without prior notification to the U.S. Justice Department.

The charge carries a sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.

"Individuals in our country who covertly do the bidding of foreign governments undermine our democracy," U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in announcing the case.

In the plea agreement, Wang admitted to promoting propaganda favorable to China "at the direction and control" of Chinese government officials from late 2020 through 2022, when she was elected to a four-year term on the Arcadia city council.

Specifically, she helped to run a website called the "U.S. News Center," which purported to be a legitimate news source for the predominantly ethnic Chinese local community but was actually a mouthpiece for the Beijing government, the plea agreement said.

According to the filing, Wang received and carried out directives from Chinese government officials to post pro-China content on the website, including articles disputing reports of human rights abuses committed against ethnic Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang region.

Responding to a complimentary text message from a Chinese government official acknowledging her work, Wang replied "Thank you leader," her plea agreement said.

According to the document, Wang had worked closely with an associate named Yaoning "Mike" Sun, who she had once publicly described as her fiance and was briefly listed as a campaign finance adviser.

Sun, 65, was sentenced in February to four years in prison after his guilty plea in October 2025 to one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.

Among Wang's contacts with the Beijing government, prosecutors alleged, was a Chinese Communist Party figure named John Chen, who according to court documents was a high-level member of China's intelligence apparatus who met personally with Chinese President X Jinping.

Chen was sentenced in November 2024 to 20 months in prison for a similar guilty plea.

A statement released by Wang's attorneys said she "apologizes and is sorry for the mistakes she has made in her personal life."

City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto said in a separate statement that the federal charge stems from "conduct that ceased after Ms. Wang was sworn into office in December 2022." It said "no city finances, staff or decision-making processes were involved."



(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)