Eileen Wang: Who is Democratic Party's mayor of Arcadia ?

The mayor of Arcadia, California, a ​heavily Chinese-American suburb of Los Angeles, has agreed to plead guilty to a federal charge of acting as ‌a foreign agent of China, spreading propaganda on behalf of Beijing, US officials said on Monday.

Within hours of the case being made public, Eileen Wang, 58, resigned from Arcadia's city council, along with the position of mayor she assumed in February on a rotating basis, according to the city manager's office.

Born in the chinse province of Sichuan,  Eileen Wang moved to Southern California about 30 years ago.

Both her parents are Chinese: her father was a physician in Sichuan province  and her mother was a doctor of Chinese medicine and acupuncture.

She switched her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat in 2022 a month after she was elected to the Arcadia City Council.

The mother of two was engaged to Yaoning "Mike" Sun, her former campaign advisor, till they  broke up in spring 2024.

Wang appeared ​briefly before a federal magistrate judge who instructed attorneys to agree to a date for a future hearing when Wang ​will formally enter her plea. Bond was set at $25,000. Monday's proceeding was conducted through a Mandarin interpreter.

In ⁠the 19-page plea deal filed April 1 and unsealed with the charging document on Monday, Wang agreed to plead guilty to a ​single felony count of acting as a foreign agent of the Chinese government without prior notification to the US Justice Department.

The charge carries ​a sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.

In the plea agreement, Wang admitted to promoting propaganda favorable to China "at the direction and control" of Chinese government ​officials from late 2020 through 2022, when she was elected to a four-year term on the Arcadia city council.

Specifically, she helped to ​run a website called the "US News Center," which purported to be a legitimate news source for the predominantly ethnic Chinese local community but was actually ‌a mouthpiece ⁠for the Beijing government, the plea agreement said.

According to the filing, Wang received and carried out directives from Chinese government officials to post pro-China content on the website, including articles disputing reports of human rights abuses committed against ethnic Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang region.

Responding to a complimentary text message from a Chinese government official acknowledging her work, Wang replied "Thank you leader," her plea agreement said.