On May 12, 58-year-old Ms. Eileen Wang resigned as mayor of Arcadia, California. Wang admitted to federal charges that she had spied for the Chinese Communist Party and spread its propaganda while in office.

According to her plea deal, from 2020 to 2022, Wang and a co-conspirator "worked at the direction and control of (People's Republic of China, PRC) government officials." They "coordinated with U.S.-based individuals to promote the PRC's interests by, among other things, promoting pro-PRC propaganda in the U.S."

Wang is definitely a slick 21st-century propagandist. Before becoming mayor, Wang ran a U.S.-based website called the U.S. News Center that routinely published pro-CCP propaganda.

Wang's fake news posts included denials of the CCP's genocide against Turkic Muslim Uyghurs. These crimes against humanity occur in Xinjiang province (northwest China), well out of the sight of Western journalists in Beijing. The grim reports that Wang's CCP controllers ordered her to dispute come from Uyghur refugees and sources in Central Asia.

Alas, the CCP has infiltrated international news outlets as well as human rights non-governmental organizations.

Here's a verified example of media infiltration: In October 2020, the Washington Free Beacon published a detailed article exposing The Economist magazine's years of "sympathetic" coverage of China's Huawei Technologies company. The report documented the magazine's profitable business relationship with the corporate giant.

According to the Free Beacon, from 2012 through 2018, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU, the magazine's for-fee consulting division) published at least seven Huawei-commissioned reports Huawei used to "advance its policy agendas and deflect cybersecurity concerns raised by Western governments." The Huawei corporation credited the EIU reports with influencing British broadband and communications policy.

In late October 2020, I wrote a column on the Free Beacon's expose and noted, "Huawei's deep financial and operational connections to the CCP are no secret. The CCP has final say over Huawei's international operations. That indicates the CCP was a silent partner in the Huawei-Economist arrangement."

My summary of the Free Beacon's accusation: Chinese money bought advantageous treatment, if not favorable news coverage and a positive editorial attitude in a news and business journal long regarded as one of the world's most influential publications.

The CCP's use of Huawei money to co-opt The Economist was quite calculated. It took money and time.

Was Wang strategically placed? It's a question President Donald Trump could ask President and General Secretary of the CCP Xi Jinping during their Beijing summit this week.

Wang was born in mainland China in the late 1960s. She came to the U.S. with her parents. Her father was a doctor who became a teacher. Early in this century, she moved to Arcadia, became involved in local life, then local politics and finally became mayor. And now she's pled guilty to being a spy.

She fits two classic spy patterns: 1) She's an immigrant with old country ties who later in life decided to sell out to the old country. 2) She is indeed a long-term CCP project — a child groomed to become an adult influencer and potential "deep asset" who can pass as an American citizen. A deep asset can more easily penetrate corporate and political targets.

However, Wang's residency status is murky. She has claimed to be a legal resident, but at least two reports claim there's no evidence she is. She is definitely not a U.S. citizen. However, these facts appeared after she was exposed.

Recall Christine Fang (aka Fang Fang), former and disgraced Rep. Eric Swalwell's (D-Calif.) paramour. Fang spent several years cultivating "relationships" in high-level political circles that over time might reward her CCP spymasters with top-secret information. In 2015, after the FBI began investigating her, Fang fled to China.

After five years of local and state political success, the less flamboyant Ms. Wang might have become a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives — a deep asset agent of influence disguised as a citizen.

Huawei's corruption of The Economist and Ms. Wang's attempt to become an upwardly mobile Chinese political mole are appalling and destructive examples of Communist China's long-term war on free societies.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Arthur Wang at Unsplash