Eileen Wang, mayor of Arcadia, Calif., has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California announced on Monday.
Wang, 58, faces up to 10 years in federal prison after agreeing to plead guilty to one felony count of acting as an unregistered foreign agent, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Federal prosecutors said Wang worked from late 2020 through 2022 at the direction of Chinese government officials to promote pro-Beijing propaganda in the United States. Wang, who was elected to the Arcadia City Council in 2022 and became mayor earlier this year through the council’s rotating leadership system, resigned from both posts Monday after the case was unsealed.
According to court documents, Wang coordinated with Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 65, of Chino Hills, Calif., who is serving a four-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2025 to acting as an illegal foreign agent for China.
Prosecutors said Wang and Sun operated U.S. News Center, a Chinese-language website that presented itself as a local news outlet for Chinese Americans while publishing material supplied by Chinese officials.
The plea agreement states that Wang posted articles denying human-rights abuses in Xinjiang and shared website traffic data with Chinese officials through the WeChat messaging platform. Wang admitted she failed to disclose that some of the site’s content was published at the direction of the Chinese government.
“By her own admission, Eileen Wang secretly served the interests of the Chinese government,” said Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division. “Let this serve as a clear warning: Individuals who act on behalf of foreign governments to influence our democracy will be identified, investigated and brought to justice.”
