“Agent” or “covert agent” seems to be the preferred way of saying “spy” in formal announcements of prison sentences for spies. At least this is true of the Justice Department’s statement about Yaoning Sun, 65, who is going to prison for four years for spying for the People’s Republic of China (February 10, 2026).
A co-conspirator in the case, John Chen (or Chen Jun), was sentenced to twenty months in prison in November 2024.
Yaoning Sun was a campaign advisor for a candidate who ended up being elected to a city council, which the Justice Department describes as the city council of “a Southern California city.” The LA Times and other sources report that Sun and the candidate were at the time romantically involved.
No idea
Sun’s lawyer, Adam Olin, who wanted his client to be sentenced only to time served, declared that what Sun did was “not independently illegal and could have been performed consistent with the law had he only registered with the Attorney General—an obligation he did not know existed.”
So, per Olin, Sun was only doing things, was not actually spying, and is guilty of an accidental procedural lapse at worst.
However, according to a plea deal, Sun’s doings were the result of instructions that “Sun received…from Chinese government officials to post pro-Beijing content on a website he ran with another individual who became a candidate for local office and won election in 2022. Sun worked as a campaign adviser for the individual and the following year drafted a report for Chinese officials seeking funding and assignments for more pro-Beijing activities, according to the agreement.”
The other individual, the candidate, is identified only as Individual 1 in the Justice press release.
The Associated Press is among the many who have identified Individual 1. “While the individual was not named in court papers, Sun was listed as a campaign treasurer for Arcadia City Council candidate Eileen Wang on a 2022 campaign statement filing. Wang earlier this month was sworn in as mayor of Arcadia, a city of nearly 60,000 people northeast of Los Angeles that has a sizable Asian population.”
The Arcadia website bio for Individual 1 reveals that she is “the daughter of proud immigrants” and a “strong proponent of creating collaborative relationships among residents.” Let us assume that Wang is innocent and simply has no ability to detect CCP propaganda or CCP spies.
Propaganda, surveillance
The Justice Department quotes three officials in its press release: Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg, Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, and First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California.
Eisenberg: “For years, Sun received and executed taskings [? help] from Chinese government officials, distorted our public discourse by disseminating Chinese propaganda, and surveilled groups in the United States that China viewed as threatening its interests as part of a campaign of intimidation.”
So we can add the task of surveillance for the CCP to the task of propagandizing for the CCP. One of Sun’s surveillance tasks was reporting on the movements of the then-president of Taiwan during her visit to California in April 2023.
The press release also notes that in a February 2023 report for PRC officials, Sun solicited “additional money and taskings [? help] from the PRC government…. In the report, Sun stated that he had worked in the United States to lead ‘delegations of U.S. dignitaries and cultural workers to China,’ ‘persist in resisting any hostile forces that undermine the friendship of U.S.-China relations, and Chinese secessionist forces,’ and, ‘most of all, during the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, I orchestrated and organized my team to win the election for city council’ for Individual 1, whom Sun called a ‘new political star,’ Sun’s plea agreement states.
“Sun’s report described various issues concerning ‘anti-China forces’ overseas, including opposition to independence for Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang as well as issues involving Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China. The report further proposed ‘using part of our Los Angeles organization’s professional core team,’ to seek to counteract those forces, according to court documents. To that end, Sun’s report requested $80,000 from the PRC government to fund a pro-PRC demonstration at a Fourth of July parade in Washington, D.C.”
Seems like more than the lone inadvertent procedural lapse that Olin was talking about.
Rozhavsky: “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.”
Remedy
Essayli: “Federal law enforcement will not allow hostile foreign nations to infiltrate the governance of our nation’s political bodies. 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.”
Essayli’s “must be met by” urges action. His “will not allow” predicts action that has yet to be accomplished, since we know that foreign nations and specifically China have indeed been infiltrating political bodies in this country. Some of the spies have been caught. Probably not all. With better vigilance, maybe the infiltration will happen less often. Let us hope that we are up to the tasking.
Also see:
Los Angeles Times: “China allegedly tried to influence this politician. She says she’s not going anywhere” (May 2, 2025)
Los Angeles Times: “Who is the politician at the center of the latest Chinese influence scandal?” (December 21, 2024)
