The arrest of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s former aide Linda Sun this week has shown the vulnerability of state governments in navigating Chinese interference attempts while Beijing is actively targeting them, top intelligence experts say.
Sun worked at the New York State (NYS) government for more than ten years during Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Hochul’s tenures, including as Hochul’s deputy chief of staff. She was arrested and charged on Sept. 3 with violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy. Her husband Chris Hu was also arrested and charged with separate offenses.
Sun, a naturalized U.S. citizen who immigrated from China when she was five, was accused of doing the bidding of four Chinese Consulate officials and two Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agents—including blocking communications between the NYS government and representatives of Taiwan, screening the governors’ messages to keep out references of Taiwan’s official name and human rights atrocities against the Uyghur people, smuggling a Chinese consulate official into a private NYS government conference call, and providing unauthorized invitation letters for Chinese provincial delegates to fraudulently obtain U.S. visas—for monetary and other benefits worth millions of dollars, mostly via her husband’s business.
The couple has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and Sun’s defense lawyer Jarrod Schaeffer said his client was “understandably upset that these charges have been brought.”
Nonetheless, the case has exposed a glaring security problem, according to two intelligence experts who both held a number of senior national security roles in government.
State governments have been “rather naive” about foreign agents, says Dennis Wilder, senior fellow at Georgetown University’s U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues.
“The difficulty with state-level security is this: They don’t have the ability to vet in the kind of detailed way that the U.S. national government does. They don’t have those kinds of resources. They don’t have people to do that kind of in-depth research, and frankly, at the state level, they don’t think necessarily that somebody is going to try to plant an agent within their government,” Wilder said, adding that the emerging cases are making state governments more attentive and more likely to seek assistance from the FBI and others.
Nicholas Eftimiades, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, also said he believes Sun’s case is “really important” because of this reason, and he called for a “whole-of-nation approach” in responding to the CCP’s activities rather than relying on the embattled FBI.
According to Eftimiades, the vetting of local officials could be as little as a one-off check of a person’s arrest record, while those who have a security clearance in the federal government get vetted every few years.
“In the meantime, your finances are monitored, your social media is monitored, if you get arrested in the country anywhere, that’s flagged. ... There’s nothing equivalent at the state or city levels, and they vary so much,” he said.
Speaking to NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times, at the 2024 RJC Annual Leadership Summit, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), said the idea that Sun was allegedly “blocking Taiwanese officials from meeting with government officials in New York is outrageous. Taiwan is our eighth largest trade partner in the world, and we have a large Taiwanese community in New York.”
Following Sun’s arrest, Hochul criticized Beijing during a press conference on Wednesday, saying the regime’s behavior is “not acceptable.”
“I also requested the State Department to take appropriate action in response to the dangerous and outrageous actions taken by the People’s Republic of China,” Hochul said.
The governor’s office previously said Sun was fired in March 2023 and reported to law enforcement after evidence of misconduct was discovered.
CCP Targeting States
Commenting on Sun’s prosecution on Thursday on X, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he had “warned all governors years ago,” adding, “The CCP is inside the gates.”
In his 2020 speech at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington, Pompeo asked governors not to “lose sight of the competition from China” and warned them about Chinese influence on U.S. campuses and from sister-city programs.
Eftimiades also noted that the CCP has been consciously targeting state governments amid increased tension with Washington.
“As of 2019, China has put an emphasis on covertly influencing people at the state level and at local levels,” Eftimiades said, referring to a Chinese report published that year that ranked U.S. governors by their friendliness to Beijing.
The report, a cooperation between a Chinese think tank and the state-affiliated Tsinghua University, categorized U.S. governors as “friendly,” “ambiguous,” or “hardline,” after analyzing their work history, public statements, and trade activities with China.
In a separate paper published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in the same year, the authors also recommended targeting governors.
“The China General Chamber of Commerce—USA has extended multiple invitations to members of Congress, including those who hold a tough stance toward China, to visit China,” the paper reads.
“The visiting of China by Governors, particularly conservative Governors, can often lead to breakthroughs in trade between China and the United States,” it added.
“So China has recognized that the federal government has become a lot more aware of the CCP’s activities, and the Congress in particular, has hardened its response to China,” Eftimiades said.
He pointed to Chinese initiatives such as sister-sister programs, saying the CCP has been trying to carry out its influence operations “covertly and openly” in the United States.
In July, the sixth U.S.-China Sister Cities Summit was held in Tacoma, Washington. During the event, Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to the United States, delivered a speech calling on the expansion of sister-city relationships on top of the existing 286 pairs of sister relationships at different levels.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in 2020 after introducing bipartisan legislation to bolster subnational diplomacy to counter China that Beijing is fostering its “own subnational diplomacy through opaquely funded cultural exchange programs, coordinating outreach to U.S. mayors, governors and state legislatures.”
Indiana enacted a ban on sister-city agreements with foreign adversaries in March. In response to the new state measure, Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) issued a statement applauding state lawmakers for focusing on “ridding [Chinese] Communist Party influence” in the Hoosiers State.
Tip of the Iceberg
Since Sun’s prosecution, Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said it’s “no secret” that the Chinese regime “works to infiltrate U.S. society at state & local levels,” in an X post, while a post by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability said Sun’s case is ”unlikely to be an isolated incident.”
Asked how many Chinese agents may be active in the United States, scholar Wilder noted there’s a difference between a classic spy and an agent of influence, which Sun was accused of being, although an agent’s role may change.
“There are a lot of agents of influence around and we don’t know who they are, but this is definitely not the only case in the United States,” Wilder said. “I think now that this case has come to light, we’re going to see more of them because state governments are now more aware. But it could be the tip of the iceberg.”
A big part of the CCP’s overseas influence operations is carried out by its “united front” network, a complex network of agencies and organizations that are coordinated by a party agency called the United Front Work Department (UFWD).
In November last year, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released a memo on China’s united front work, saying that its network aims to “influence universities, think tanks, civic groups, other prominent individuals and institutions, and public opinion broadly.”
Citing a Newsweek investigation in 2020 that found 600 United Front organizations in the United States, Eftimiades said that if each of the organizations had recruited several people, the CCP could have “at least 20,000 to 30,000 actively working—knowingly or not—on behalf of China.”
As for classic spies, Wilder pointed to the size of China’s top intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), which has an estimated 100,000 employees, around five times the size of the CIA.
He also noted that the MSS is “a dispersed organization.”
“They’re at provincial levels. The Shanghai Bureau of the MSS, for example, is responsible for the United States,” he said adding that different MSS branches have “varying degrees of sophistication.”
In recent weeks, the Department of Justice has announced charges against two Chinese Americans for allegedly acting as spies for the MSS. The duo, Wang Shujun and Tang Yuanjun, are both naturalized U.S. citizens.
Masquerading as pro-democracy activists, Wang and Tang allegedly collected information on Chinese dissidents in the United States and shared their findings with MSS agents, according to prosecutors.
Wilder also said that one of the Chinese consulates’ functions is to “provide cover” for MSS agents, “whether it’s through Xinhua News Agency reporters, or other positions within the embassy.”
In July 2020, the United States ordered the Chinese consulate in Houston to shut down in a rare move. Senate Intelligence Committee acting Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said at the time the move was “long overdue” because the consulate was a “massive spy center.”
In retaliation, Beijing shut down the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu.
Chinese Consulate in New York
Following Sun’s arrest, Hochul said on Sept. 4 that she had learned Chinese consul general Huang Ping was “no longer in the New York mission” following her request to the U.S. State Department that he be ousted.
Providing further clarification on the status of Huang on the same day, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said he had been informed that Huang had reached the end of his rotation at the end of August and left the post. “The consul general was not expelled,” he added.
However, the Chinese consulate in New York released a post later in the evening, saying Huang visited a WWII Flying Tiger veteran in Pennsylvania on Sept. 3 as consul general.
The confusion over Huang’s exit is the result of a “calculated diplomatic decision” to avoid an “official diplomatic incident,” Eftimiades said, adding that “things are always confused” for a couple of days in such cases.
In 2022, Zheng Xiyuan, Chinese consul general in Manchester, UK, left his post under similar circumstances after he and several other consulate officials assaulted Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Bob Chan.
The Chinese consulate in New York has been involved in other criminal cases.
Former New York Consul General Peng Keyu also faced calls for his expulsion after he admitted to involvement in acts of violence against Falun Gong practitioners in 2008.
New York’s Flushing neighborhood was the site of sustained violence against Falun Gong adherents that lasted several months in 2008. Mobs of Chinese nationals physically assaulted, verbally harassed, and threw rocks at Falun Gong practitioners.
Peng later told an undercover investigator that he had encouraged the violence of pro-CCP groups.
In recent years, U.S. prosecutors have charged a number of alleged Chinese agents, although some cases have been dropped.
In April last year, two Chinese nationals, Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping, were charged with allegedly establishing a secret police station in Manhattan, in coordination with the Chinese regime’s Ministry of Public Security.
According to prosecutors, the Chinese consulate in New York allegedly directed Lu to publish materials in newspapers targeting Falun Gong. Additionally, Lu allegedly said he received money from the consulate to help bring members from his association on buses to Washington.
Lin Ying, a former manager at the Chinese state-owned airline Air China, pleaded guilty to acting as a Chinese agent in 2019, as she smuggled luggage onboard flights for Chinese military officers. In exchange, the Chinese consulate in New York provided her with benefits such as tax-exempt purchases of liquor, cigarettes, and electronic devices.
In 2020, a New York Police Department (NYPD) officer was arrested on charges relating to spying on Tibetans in the New York area at the request of the Chinese consulate. Federal prosecutors dropped their case against the officer in 2023.
