Eileen Wang, the former mayor of Arcadia, California, pleaded guilty on May 30, 2026, to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government. Wang, who resigned earlier in May, was charged in April with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She admitted to promoting articles favorable to Beijing without notifying the U.S. government, as required by law.
Wang's illegal activities reportedly occurred from late 2020 to 2022, according to federal prosecutors. Arcadia city officials and Wang's attorneys stated that her actions ended before she took office. Arcadia, located approximately 13 miles northeast of Los Angeles, has a population of about 53,000, with a significant Asian and Chinese resident demographic.
During her court appearance in downtown Los Angeles, U.S. District Judge Wesley Hsu ensured that Wang understood her rights and the implications of her guilty plea, with a Mandarin interpreter present, although Wang did not require assistance. She was released on a $25,000 bond until her sentencing on October 6, where she faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and three years of supervised release.
Wang's plea agreement revealed that she and her then-fiancé, Yaoning 'Mike' Sun, acted on behalf of Chinese officials by disseminating propaganda through a website called U.S. News Center. Sun is currently serving a four-year sentence after pleading guilty to the same charge last October and was listed as the treasurer for Wang’s 2022 election campaign.
In June 2021, a Chinese government official sent Wang a link to a letter published in the Los Angeles Times by the consul general of China in Los Angeles, which denied allegations of genocide and forced labor against Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Wang shared this link on her website shortly after receiving it.
The U.S. and other nations have labeled China's actions against Uyghurs as genocide. Following Wang's resignation, some residents and former officials expressed that she should have stepped down sooner due to the FBI investigation related to Sun's case. Acting mayor Paul Cheng noted that the city charter only allows for the removal of a councilmember upon conviction of a crime, which had not occurred at that time.
