A Southern California man acted as a covert agent for the People’s Republic of China and helped a local council member win office in hopes that this “new political star” would promote pro-Chinese policies in America, according to federal court documents.
While the political leader in question remains in office, the agent is behind bars. Yaoning Sun, 65, of Chino Hills, was sentenced Monday to four years in federal prison after pleading guilty in October to one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.
Sun worked for years as an illegal agent for the People’s Republic of China, submitting reports to high-level government officials on the work he carried out on their behalf, according to a sentencing memorandum written by federal prosecutors. This work included countering Falun Gong, a spiritual practice banned in China that has followers in Southern California, and pro-Taiwanese independence forces, as well as performing surveillance of the then-president of Taiwan during her April 2023 visit to the U.S. and publishing pro-PRC propaganda on an online news site.
Throughout 2022, Sun worked as the campaign advisor to a politician identified as Individual 1 in court records. Sources familiar with the investigation confirmed to The Times that the politician in question was Eileen Wang.
Wang won election to the Arcadia City Council in November 2022 with assistance from Sun, who at the time, was her fiance and campaign consultant. Campaign records examined by The Times show that Sun helped bring in donations — some of which came from sources with ties to the Chinese government.
In an April 2025 statement Wang said that her romantic relationship with Sun endedeight months before he was charged by federal prosecutors in December 2024. On Feb. 3 she was sworn in as mayor of the San Gabriel Valley city. She did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
Sun’s co-conspirator, John Chen, was sentenced to 20 months in prison in November 2024 in a separate case for acting as an unregistered agent of the People’s Republic of China and bribing an Internal Revenue Service agent in New York.
While Sun was acting as Wang’s political consultant in 2022, Chen instructed him to make a list of U.S. politicians that she was familiar with, saying this would help elevate her status in China, according to the criminal complaint. He instructed Sun to send pictures of her campaigning, standing with a U.S. Congress member and with the People’s Republic of China’s ambassador to the United States.
That same year, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center sent a bulletin to local officials nationwide noting that China “understands that U.S. state and local leaders enjoy a degree of independence from Washington and may seek to use them as proxies to advocate for national U.S. policies Beijing desires.”
Sun was represented by public defenders, who recommended he be sentenced to time served, meaning no more than 15 months. In a sentencing memorandum, they wrote that Sun moved to the U.S. from China in 1996 and became a part of the Chinese community in the San Gabriel Valley.
“For decades he lived a law-abiding life, raising his children and working in various cultural arenas,” they wrote. “Now, at the age of 65, Mr. Sun has pleaded guilty to agreeing to act as an agent of the PRC without registering with the Attorney General.”
They argued that he had a very low chance of recidivism and should be sentenced leniently.
Federal prosecutors took a different stance, recommending in a sentencing memorandum that Sun be sentenced to 60 months imprisonment and three years of supervised release because he “served a pivotal role in the PRC’s efforts to influence U.S. politicians in their favor at all levels of government.”
Prosecutors also argued that China is a major threat to U.S. national security and that it is a national priority to detect and suppress “malign foreign influence and transnational repression campaigns.”
“Accordingly, in order to properly reflect the seriousness of the offense and to deter others who would similarly act as an unregistered agent of a foreign power in the United States, a substantial sentence is necessary,” prosecutors wrote.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner sentenced Sun to 48 months in federal prison.
Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, lauded the sentenced, saying it reflects the agency’s commitment to holding accountable anyone who attempts to subvert the will of American voters at the behest of foreign adversaries.
“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,” Rozhavsky said in a statement. “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.”
Times staff writers Hannah Fry, Richard Winton and Rebecca Ellis contributed to this report.
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