The mayor of a Southern California city has agreed to plead guilty to charges of acting as a foreign agent of the Chinese government, US officials said Monday.
Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang was charged in April with a felony count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government in the United States. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said On Monday.
This charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years in America.
The A19 page plea deal was unveiled along with the charging document on Monday.
According to the Arcadia City Council website, Wang resigned as mayor within hours of his affair becoming public.
She was elected to the five-member city council in November 2022 and took over as mayor on a rotation basis in February.
Arcadia is a heavily Chinese-American suburb located just north of Los Angeles. The city is home to approximately 53,000 residents.
What has Wang admitted?
According to their plea agreement, Wang and an associate, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, promoted China-friendly propaganda “at the direction and control” of Chinese government officials from late 2020 to 2022.
According to the Justice Department, the two operated the news website US News Center – which served the local Chinese-American community – and promoted pro-Chinese propaganda through it.
“Wang and Sun received instructions and executed them [Chinese] To post government officials [pro-Chinese] Content on the website,” the department said.
According to the petition filed in court, the pro-China content published on the site included articles that disputed reports of persecution, forced labor and ill-treatment of ethnic Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region.
Sun pleaded guilty to the same charges as Wang in October 2025 and is serving a four-year prison sentence.
Wang once publicly described Sun as his fiancée.
The 68-year-old was also listed in campaign filings as treasurer for Wang’s 2022 election campaign.
Prosecutors also allege that Wang communicated with a Chinese Communist Party figure named John Chen, who also pleaded guilty to being an agent for the Chinese government and was sentenced to 20 months in prison in 2024.
What’s next for the former mayor?
On Monday, Wang’s lawyers Jason Liang and Brian Sun said in a statement that they recognized the seriousness of the allegation and accepted responsibility for “past personal mistakes.”
“She apologizes for the mistakes she made in her personal life and she is remorseful,” he said. “His love and dedication to the Arcadia community has neither changed nor wavered.”
Wang appeared briefly before a federal magistrate judge. The lawyers were asked to agree on a date for a future hearing, during which Wang would formally enter her plea. A bond was set at $25,000 (approximately €21,261).
Edited by: Rana Taha