{"id":70074,"date":"2026-05-13T22:39:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T22:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/70074\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T22:39:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T22:39:33","slug":"do-california-democrats-have-a-ccp-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/70074\/","title":{"rendered":"Do California Democrats have a CCP problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"

California has been hit by yet another Chinese spy scandal. Eileen Wang, the now-former mayor of Arcadia \u2014 a Los Angeles suburb where nearly half<\/a> the residents are Chinese \u2014 this week agreed<\/a> to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent of Beijing. Wang and her then-fianc\u00e9 and campaign treasurer Yaoning \u201cMike\u201d Sun allegedly \u201cexecuted directives\u201d from Chinese officials and ran a site called US News Center to launder propaganda to Chinese-American readers. This included a letter from China\u2019s Los Angeles Consul General airbrushing the persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

Is this the latest example that California Democrats have a CCP problem? Over a decade ago, former representative Eric Swalwell found himself entangled<\/a> with the Chinese agent Fang Fang. The late senator Dianne Feinstein, meanwhile, unwittingly employed<\/a> a Beijing spy on her staff for two decades.<\/p>\n

Beijing\u2019s overseas operations rely on two arms of the regime. The first is the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China\u2019s central spy agency. The second is the United Front Work Department, the party organ charged with cultivating sympathetic networks abroad. California is unusually target-rich for both: Silicon Valley, defense and aerospace sites, Stanford University<\/a>, huge ports and wealthy donors all sit within easy reach. The MSS has long been reported to operate<\/a> through China\u2019s San Francisco consulate, and the state\u2019s colossal Chinese diaspora makes it a nirvana for intelligence-gathering. Chinese operatives obtain a valuable recruitment pool and cover for their work.<\/p>\n

Because Democratic primaries are the only elections that matter in California, operatives can swoop in as bundlers, delivering donors and votes from an ethnic community in one neat package. Fang Fang bundled for Swalwell while also scouting and grooming up-and-coming Democrats \u2014 and got results. Swalwell rose to the House Intelligence Committee, and Fang helped place an intern in his Washington office.<\/p>\n

Wang\u2019s incentive looks similarly transactional. Thanks to America\u2019s lack of campaign-finance laws, CCP operatives could help her build a local political base through precisely the associations Beijing wished to influence. In a memo<\/a> to his PRC handlers requesting more cash, Sun boasted that he had \u201corchestrated and organized\u201d Wang\u2019s 2022 council win, describing her as a \u201cnew political star\u201d. The memo spotlighted the pair\u2019s \u201cpast struggle\u201d against \u201cTaiwanese independence forces\u201d and \u201cFLG\u201d (the anti-CCP religious movement Falun Gong) \u201cinfluences\u201d in Arcadia.<\/p>\n

CCP infiltration will remain a bug in California politics. The Golden State\u2019s economy is deeply tied to Chinese trade, manufacturing and technology supply chains, making it difficult to unwind that relationship. As such, Governor Gavin Newsom follows the state\u2019s tradition of cultivating<\/a> a \u201csubnational\u201d relationship with China. On his 2023 visit<\/a> to China, Newsom told his hosts in Hong Kong that \u201cregardless of what happens nationally, subnationally you have a partner in the state of California.\u201d Newsom\u2019s public statements on Chinese espionage, meanwhile, are practically non-existent.<\/p>\n

Nor is this likely to sit near the top of Donald Trump\u2019s agenda as he meets<\/a> with Xi Jinping this week. Still, if Trump were inclined to needle his Chinese counterpart, bringing up the Arcadia case might do the trick \u2014 though Xi, knowing how many more operations remain hidden from the US, would probably feel a flicker of pity rather than embarrassment.<\/p>\n

After all, California Democrats \u2014 even those unlikely to be in cahoots with Beijing \u2014 appear to have been none the wiser. Representative Judy Chu vigorously supported<\/a> Wang\u2019s campaign and later named her a \u201cCongressional Woman of the Year\u201d \u2014 proof, if any were needed, that Wang was very good at her jobs. Both of them. She\u2019s out now, but one suspects Beijing had already pinned a medal of its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California has been hit by yet another Chinese spy scandal. Eileen Wang, the now-former mayor of Arcadia \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[544,39155,250,13325,542,3202],"class_list":{"0":"post-70074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gavin-newsom","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-ccp","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-espionage","12":"tag-gavin-newsom","13":"tag-uncategorized"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116569674248470603","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}