California Mayor Resigns, Charged as Illegal Chinese Agent: ‘Disturbing’

Roughly 3 1/2 years after being elected as mayor of Arcadia, Calif., Eileen Wang is facing serious federal charges as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Wang, 58, was elected in November 2022 to the Arcadia City Council, involving a five-person governing body where the mayor is selected on a rotating basis. Arcadia, a city located about 13 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley, has a population of roughly 54,000 residents.

As part of an announcement made Monday by the Justice Department, Wang, 58, is charged with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She made her initial court appearance on Monday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles.

The DOJ, citing a related filing, says that Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony count and will do so in “coming weeks.” She reportedly admitted in her plea agreement that she did not notify the attorney general that she was acting in the United States as an agent of the PRC, that she was located in the United States when she engaged in these acts, and that did she not disclose on her website that some of its content had been posted at the direction of members of the PRC government.

She faces a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

“Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg said in a statement.

Military.com reached out to all remaining Arcadia City Council members but received no response.

Charges Go Years Back, Include Multiple Agents

Federal prosecutors allege that Wang’s entanglement with PRC authorities dates back to 2020.

According to the DOJ and Wang’s plea agreement, she 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 from late 2020 through 2022.

On Feb. 9, 2026, Sun was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison for acting as an illegal agent, including while serving as the campaign advisor for Wang in Arcadia. The pair worked together on different propaganda, according to authorities, with both receiving and executing directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content online through a website called U.S. News Center that purported to be a news source for the local Chinese-American community.

Sun was also found to have “closely surveilled” the then-president of Taiwan during her April 2023 visit to Southern California, “reporting directly to PRC officials on her movements.”

The DOJ cites a specific incident from June 2021, when 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[.]”

Minutes later, according to the DOJ, Wang posted the article on her own website and responded to the PRC official with a link to the article. Others in the group chat did the same, prompting a hapy reply from a PRC official: “So fast, thank you everyone.”

Another incident just two months after the Los Angeles Times essay involved Wang and three other members of the same group chat sharing links to the same article on their respective “news” websites, to which the PRC official thanked them for their “reporting.”

Wang even edited the article to appease the PRC official, then sent a link showing the requested changes along with a screenshot showing that the propaganda piece had been viewed 15,128 times. After the official messaged, “Great!,” Wang replied, “Thank you leader.”

Aside from her close contact with Sun, Wang in November 2021 communicated with John Chen—described as a high-level member of the PRC intelligence apparatus—who regularly attended elite Chinese Communist Party functions, including military parades, and met personally with President Xi Jinping, according to court documents. Wang asked Chen to post “news” from her website, adding, “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send.”

In November 2024, Chen was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison after pleading guilty in the Southern District of New York to acting as an illegal agent of the PRC and conspiracy to bribe a public official.

‘Disturbing’ Turn of Events

Rushan Abbas, founder of Campaign for Uyghurs, said the charges against Wang show a broader pattern of PCR propaganda efforts.

The link hits home for Rushan, who spoke with Military.com in March 2026. Her sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, 63, a retired physician and ethnic Uyghur, was disappeared by Chinese authorities in September 2018 in China’s western region of Xinjiang. She was taken after Rushan publicly spoke out against the Chinese Communist Party’s oppression of Uyghurs.

Gulshan’s family was unaware of her whereabouts until December 2020, when it was learned that a secret trial had taken place in March 2019 declaring Gulshan guilty for “taking part in organized terrorism, aiding terrorist activities and seriously disrupting social order.”

“Eileen Wang’s case is a disturbing example of how aggressively the CCP works to influence narratives and suppress the truth far beyond China’s borders,” Rushan Abbas told Military.com. “Wang endorsed the CCP’s denial of the Uyghur genocide that has been documented through survivor testimony, investigative research, leaked CCP documents, and recognized by the United States.

“As an American citizen, I spoke out against China’s genocidal crimes in the US, but my freedom of speech cost my dear sister Gulshan Abbas’ freedom back home. She is a retired medical doctor and not a political person. Her unjust imprisonment was aimed at silencing my voice. Due to individuals like Wang who are willing to act on behalf of Beijing, transnational repression is reaching beyond China’s borders, manipulating and distorting the information space, threatening our cherished freedom, and obstructing accountability for China’s genocide.”

According to the Arcadia City Council website, which states that Wang resigned on May 11 and vacated her position, the City Council plans to select a mayor and mayor pro tem from among the remaining council members. They will also begin discussing how Arcadia’s District 3 will be represented until the next election cycle this November.