California Mayor Resigns After Pleading Guilty to Acting as Agent for China

The mayor of Arcadia, a city in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles, resigned after pleading guilty this week to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government. The mayor, 58, admitted to federal law enforcement that she secretly served the interests of the Chinese government, according to the FBI.

She agreed to plead guilty to one count of acting as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general and resigned the same day she was formally charged. The case centers on a media platform the mayor once operated with another individual whom she believed to be her fiancé.

That individual, who pleaded guilty to the same charge in October, is serving a four-year sentence in federal prison. Prosecutors said the pair promoted propaganda for the People's Republic of China through a website called U.S. News Center that was geared toward Chinese Americans in the area.

According to the plea agreement, the mayor and the other individual executed directives from representatives of the People's Republic of China and sometimes sought permission from Chinese government officials before posting content. The charges were filed this week, although the mayor's name had been linked to related allegations for years.

A 2024 Los Angeles Times report described how Chinese government officials had asked for information on the mayor while she campaigned for office in Arcadia. At that time the officials described her as a new political star in a complaint filed against the other individual, but there was no connection made then to the propaganda postings.

The mayor was elected to the Arcadia City Council in 2022 and became mayor in February of this year. She had become a prominent figure in the local Asian American community.

The FBI director announced the case on X, prompting replies that suggested investigating other prominent Asian American women in politics or proposed violent punishment for the mayor. A spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee said the case represented another example of Chinese-led plans to weaken the United States from within.

Advocacy groups expressed concern that the online rhetoric formed part of a longer pattern of fear and discrimination directed at Asian communities, particularly Chinese immigrants. One professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University said Asian people in the U.S. are often viewed as perpetual outsiders, which in some cases has motivated violence.

The comments follow a pattern seen during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the disease's initial appearance in China contributed to a wave of anti-Asian violence in the United States and elsewhere. Similar suspicions of Asian people have appeared at other times in U.S. history, including the 19th-century yellow peril stereotype that portrayed Asians as an existential threat to the West.

A survey this year by the Asian American Foundation found that one in five U.S. adults worried that Chinese Americans pose a threat to society. More than one in five Asian American and Pacific Islander adults reported being harassed or insulted in the past year because of their race.

The CEO of an advocacy group in Southern California said the rhetoric risks painting an entire community as suspicious or disloyal. She cited the 1982 killing of Vincent Chin in Detroit as an earlier example of violence linked to anti-Asian sentiment during economic tensions with Asian manufacturers.

The mayor's attorneys said her political work in Arcadia was separate from the federal charge. "She apologizes and is sorry for the mistakes she has made in her personal life," the attorneys said.