A California councilwoman is the fiancée of a man accused of peddling political influence on behalf of the Chinese regime, court records show.
Sun is also known as Sun Yaoning. Court records show that he is a former Chinese army member. He was the campaign manager for Eileen Wang in 2022, the year she won the city council seat for Arcadia in Los Angeles County with nearly two-thirds of the vote, prosecutors said.
Helping Wang win the midterm election, Sun said in a draft report to Chinese officials, was his proudest achievement as someone who “[persists] in resisting any hostile forces that undermine the friendship of US-China relations, and Chinese secessionist forces,” according to federal prosecutors.
A review of the court records, public information, and business filings reveals the personal connections between Wang and Sun, who have engaged in several ventures together, including a U.S.-based media group, business entities, and multiple pro-Beijing organizations.
One of them is the American Southwest Chamber of Commerce, a Los Angeles nonprofit Wang founded in 2018 that purports to “promote communication of American southwest people of China,” according to business filings.
Wang confirmed her engagement to Sun in a court filing over a 2023 defamation lawsuit with Michelle Wu, a certified public accountant who had served as the president of the chamber. Wu sued Wang, Sun, and several other individuals with the organization, saying that they had falsely accused her of pilfering the organization’s funds.
“Defendant Sun is Wang’s fiancé and is engaged to be married to Wang, further solidifying their close personal and professional relationship,” Wu stated in her complaint. She didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.
Wang acknowledged the engagement while refuting the allegations in a subsequent filing.
According to the complaint, Sun’s last registered physical address with the Department of Motor Vehicles is a home that the politician owned.
Incorporation filings show that Sun and Wang had co-run a mainly Chinese-language media outlet called U.S. News Center. Its last post was published on Dec. 16. The site has run a series of articles featuring Wang first as a city council candidate and later as an elected official. One February 2022 article, labeled under the category “top elite Chinese elected officials,” noted Wang’s support for a public charity and described her as someone who “spares no efforts in serving the community.”
The two have interacted with each other’s posts on LinkedIn, and Wang’s name has appeared as an author on the media site with hundreds of entries.
‘New Political Star’
Born in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in southwestern China, Wang had attended college in Los Angeles, according to Chinese language media reports. Prior to entering politics, she ran a tutoring center called “Little Stanford Academy” for K–12 students.In campaign rallies in 2022, Wang had appealed to Taiwanese American voters by highlighting her family roots. She mentioned that her grandfather was a lieutenant general and one of the earliest cadets in Whampoa Military Academy, the school established by Sun Yat-sen, whom Taiwan reveres as the founding father of its democracy.
While Wang’s campaign garnered Taiwanese support, prosecutors said that Chinese operatives have plotted to influence politicians like her to act in line with Beijing on issues such as Taiwan.
In conversations about the draft, Chen allegedly called Wang a “new political star,” and instructed Sun to enumerate his and Sun’s “past struggle fighting Taiwanese independence forces” and Falun Gong practitioners in the local area.
Chen had proposed a plan to disrupt a new congressman’s upcoming visit to Taiwan, according to prosecutors. In February 2023, they flagged Taiwanese and Falun Gong participation in the Rose Parade and Independence Day Parade, according to the federal complaint. They allegedly promised to counter that by creating their own drum band and float, and they applied for $80,000 in funding from Chinese officials.
“Once the project is approved, must execute well,” Chen wrote to Sun, who responded in the affirmative, according to court documents.
Learning from Chen about Wang’s election victory, three Chinese officials seemed enthusiastic. They responded variously with salute emojis, smiley faces, and thumbs up, the filings show.
Chen, according to the complaint, paid special attention to Wang’s “friendly relationship” with a U.S. congressperson, whose name authorities redacted from the filing, and noted that Wang has “lots of contact with mainstream politicians.” Chen also commented on Wang’s familial history, remarking that her grandfather was “very famous,” according to quoted conversations.
Asked about the case, Chu said that she had issued an announcement to her congressional district to seek nominations for the award, and that Wang was one of the 10 selected.
“Nominated by members of her community, Eileen had a strong résumé as the first Asian American woman elected to the Arcadia City Council in 119 years,” Chu told The Epoch Times.
“She founded and led a Chinese American chamber of commerce that got more Chinese Americans involved in the community,” she said, listing several initiatives that Wang had been involved in, including supporting new affordable housing projects and raising money for the Arcadia Police Foundation for a police dog.
“When we honored her, the entire city council and the leaders of the Arcadia community came out to support her,” Chu said.
China Trips
Records gathered by prosecutors show that in 2023, Wang and Sun had planned a trip together through six cities across China. Sun told Chen that he would be meeting with a Chinese leader, likely part of the Chinese intelligence apparatus, to present his work report, according to the FBI agent.
Three months later, in August 2023, Wang flew from Los Angeles to Hong Kong; she returned on the same flight with Sun from Shanghai to Los Angeles that September, the complaint said.
Chinese media reports show that Wang had engaged with Chinese authorities as the head of the American Southwest Chamber of Commerce.
In April 2019, Wang traveled to Chengdu with Sun to celebrate the creation of a Sichuan branch of the chamber. Officials from the provincial Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, a Chinese Communist Party organ that targets the Chinese diaspora, spoke at the opening ceremony and posed for photos with the pair, according to the reports. The reports quoted Wang promising to “proactively plan and organize” activities to advance U.S.–China interactions in areas such as economy, education, culture, technology, and medicine.
The two made another China trip in November of the same year to make donations to 10 poor students in the Sichuan city of Shehong. The activity received “strong support” from the city’s United Front Department, Beijing’s overseas political influence network that the Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese is part of, according to a post on the provincial federation website.
“I’ve been in the United States for over two decades, but I often go back to China,” Sun was cited as saying. He said that there are many Chinese immigrants like him that “hope to contribute to their home country to the best of their ability.”
The Epoch Times has contacted Wang for comment.
He said that “Sun had no involvement whatsoever with City of Arcadia business or decision-making” and that the City of Arcadia “supports a thorough and comprehensive investigation by our federal partners into these serious allegations.”
Wang has spoken to the FBI, according to Lazzaretto. She hasn’t been arrested or charged with any crime, and has stated that she “intends to fully cooperate with federal authorities throughout this process,” he said.
