A secret Chinese police station hiding in plain sight in New York City. Clandestine efforts by Communist Party operatives to spy on and bully Chinese expatriates. Now, charges that a former aide to two New York governors was secretly acting as a Chinese government agent, the Associated Press reports. The Justice Department has initiated a wave of prosecutions aimed at rooting out covert agents advancing Beijing’s interests on U.S. soil. In Brooklyn alone, federal prosecutors in the last four years have brought at least a dozen criminal cases against more than 90 people — the latest being Tuesday’s arrest of Linda Sun, who once served as deputy chief of staff to Gov. Kathy Hochul and was earlier an aide to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The Sun charges are the most startling example yet of a threat U.S. officials have warned about for years: China’s determination to influence U.S. policy and cultivate relationships with political figures seen as having access to the levers of power, even if only at a local level.
While the public might think of foreign agents as people who eavesdrop on military officials or steal state secrets, China is eager to exert influence in less splashy areas, like currying favor with U.S. officials with control over things like local land use regulations or labor issues. “There is definitely an effort to develop relationships and friendships and connections in state and local governments,” said Adam Hickey, a former DOJ national security official who led the department’s enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which Sun is charged with violating. Prosecutors say Sun developed a close relationship with officials in the Chinese consulate in New York and did their bidding in ways that were important, albeit unlikely to make the plot of a spy novel. Among other things, she is accused of quietly spoiling efforts by representatives of Taiwan’s government to meet with top New York state officials. The Chinese government considers Taiwan to be part of China. She also allegedly encouraged Cuomo and Hochul to make supportive remarks about China such as thanking Chinese companies for donating medical equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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