A Chinese spy cozied up to a California city councilwoman — and helped to get the new “political star” elected in 2022 — to advance Beijing’s interests, the feds said.
Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 65, will spend four years in prison after getting Eileen Wang to fall for him while serving as her campaign adviser and treasurer during her campaign for Arcadia City Council.
At the direction of People’s Republic of China officials, he helped “orchestrate” the Wang’s 2022 election victory and subsequently submitted detailed reports to Chinese intelligence detailing how they had successfully “cultivated” a new “political star” friendly to the Chinese government, according to court documents.
The pair went on to become engaged, the Los Angeles Times reported. Some of the donations Sun helped steer to Wang’s campaign came from those with ties to the Chinese government.
According to the federal complaint, he personally drafted a formal “work report” for the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department. This report explicitly took credit for “orchestrating” Wang’s victory and was intended to be placed on the “Big Boss’s desk” in Beijing to prove the efficacy of their “team dedicated for us”.
Sun pleaded guilty in October 2025 to one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.
“Federal law enforcement will not allow hostile foreign nations to infiltrate the governance of our nation’s political bodies,” First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement announcing Sun’s sentence on Monday.
“The relentlessness of PRC intelligence operations in our country must be met by equal relentlessness on our part to secure, protect, and defend the United States.”
Court records also show that during the April 2023 visit of then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to Southern California, Sun closely monitored her movements and reported directly to PRC consular officials.
Sun and Wang — who went on to get engaged — were also closely linked through business ventures. They are registered together on filings for the American Southwest Chamber of Commerce, an association meant to promote communication among Chinese Americans in the Southwest, and Sun ran a media site with Wang called US News Center.
Wang has not been charged, and sources said there is no evidence she knew about Sun’s espionage activities. But the affair and business connections highlight how Sun leveraged intimate access to advance Beijing’s influence in local politics.
“When Americans vote for elected officials, they expect them to represent the interests of their constituents—not those of a foreign adversary like the Chinese government,” said Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division.
“By exploiting his position as a campaign advisor, Yaoning Sun attempted to undermine our political processes and democratic institutions for the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party.”
The case against Sun was brought during the Biden administration, as US officials raised concerns that China was seeking to influence local elections by backing candidates friendly to Beijing, the Associated Press reported.
His co-conspirator, John Chen — aka Chen Jun — was sentenced in 2024 to 20 months in prison after copping to charges of acting as an illegal agent of the PRC and conspiracy to bribe a public official.
Sun also requested a budget of $80,000 from the PRC to fund a pro-Beijing “drum band” and float for the July 4th parade in Washington, D.C.. The goal was to counteract “hostile forces” like Falun Gong and “false flag” (Taiwanese) representations in major U.S. parades, a communication between him and his co-conspirator revealed.
“Chen was a high-level member of the PRC intelligence apparatus, who regularly attended elite [Chinese Communist Party] functions, including military parades…[and] met personally with PRC President Xi Jinping,” the feds said.
“Per his own report, and other communications between Chen and PRC officials, [Sun] served as Chen’s right-hand man in the United States for decades.”
