Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang has resigned after agreeing to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government, city and federal officials said. Wang, 58, was expected to appear in federal court Monday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles and enter the plea in the coming weeks, according to the reporting.
Wang had been charged in April with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government. The case, officials said, centered on alleged work that involved promoting Chinese government interests in the U.S. without prior notification to the federal government as required by law.
City manager Dominic Lazzaretto said in a city news release that city finances or staff were not involved. “We want to be clear: this investigation concerns individual conduct, and the charges are for conduct that ceased after Ms. Wang was sworn into office in December 2022,” he said.
Federal officials said Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. Prosecutors said Wang’s alleged conduct involved sharing articles favorable to Beijing, including through a website aimed at the Chinese American community.
Wang’s attorneys, Jason Liang and Brian Sun, said in a statement that she recognizes the seriousness of the charge and accepts responsibility for “past personal mistakes.” They said she apologized and was sorry for mistakes she made in her personal life, adding, “Her love and devotion for the Arcadia community have not changed and did not waver.”
According to the plea agreement described in court filings, Wang and a colleague, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, worked on behalf of People’s Republic of China officials from the end of 2020 to 2022. Prosecutors said their work promoted pro-PRC propaganda in the U.S., and the reporting said Yaoning Sun pleaded guilty to the same charge last October and is serving a four-year sentence.
The reporting also said Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun operated the news website U.S. News Center, aimed at the Chinese American community, and were instructed by Chinese government officials to post pro-PRC content on the site. In one instance in June 2021, the reporting said, a government official sent Wang a link to a Los Angeles Times letter written by China’s consul general in Los Angeles refuting reports about persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and Wang shared the link on her news site within minutes.
The reporting said the U.S. and several other countries have declared that Beijing’s policies against Uyghurs amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity. Wang’s attorneys said that at the time she was engaged to Yaoning Sun and that her relationship ended in spring 2024, describing her trust in “apparently the wrong person who ultimately led her astray.”
Wang also communicated with John Chen, who pleaded guilty in a separate case and was sentenced to 20 months in prison, according to the reporting. Arcadia is about 13 miles (21 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles and has a population of about 53,000, with a majority Asian community and a high concentration of Chinese residents.