The CCP’s Influence Network Behind a California Mayor’s Guilty Plea | Joshua Philipp

Arcadia Mayer was just charged because she was acting as a foreign agent for the Chinese Communist Party. How big is the influence of China in California? We have been covering this. Today we sit down with Joshua Phillip, who is a senior investigative journalist for the Epoch Times, to see how big is the influence of China in California. And is there more of this happening right now? For the CCP, that's why they want to do this. It's one of the main goals of the United Front. The goal is to have people in leadership positions serving the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. And so what you end up with is a puppet state. I'm Siamak, and this is California Insider. Josh, it's great to have you back on. Welcome back. Always a pleasure, Siamak. We want to talk to you about the situation that it's shocking. In a sense, a mayor in California, in Los Angeles, mayor of Arcadia, is pleading guilty to acting as a foreign agent for China. Can you tell us what's happening? Yeah, well, she pled guilty. Others around her have also been arrested. One was sentenced to four years. And it seems what was happening was that she was posting propaganda on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. She pled guilty to this. It's not even being questioned now. Some of this included, for example, denying human rights abuses in China, especially against the Muslim Uyghurs, claiming there was no genocide against them, which is bizarre, because what you have then is this elected official in a city in America who is covering up human rights abuses on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. This has been in the news for a while, and the campaign manager was indicted. Can you tell us more about this whole case? We don't know a whole lot about how the investigation went down. We don't know a whole lot about how broad this is. Again, others, as you mentioned, the campaign manager has been indicted. But I would actually say this is a bigger issue than what's on the surface here. I would actually say this is probably a lot more common than people realize. I mean, just talking about California. Maybe some people watching this remember an individual named Rose Pack. Rose Pack used to be called the kingmaker of San Francisco. Mainstream media used to call her this. This was public. It wasn't some secret or some rumor or some random thing on the Internet. Mainstream media called this woman the kingmaker of California, of Northern California. San Francisco, which is, once you win San Francisco, you're essentially a star in California, or you're in the national stage when it comes to politics. Well, sure. I mean, because that's Silicon Valley. That's a lot of the investments. That's, of course, you know, if you win, of course, San Francisco and L.A., you control most of California. That's just how it is. So you could not get into politics without the blessing of Rose Pack. That was effectively what was being said at the time. Now, Rose Pack since died, she got an organ transplant in China, died of complications. But Rose Pack was also a known agent of the Chinese Communist Party, like publicly. So how is it that an individual who was a known agent of the CCP was also the one that you could not get into politics in San Francisco unless you had the blessings of? I think that raises some real maybe concerns or maybe some flags that maybe there should be investigations into every politician who got the blessing of Rose Pack and whether that could constitute maybe foreign interest from the Chinese Communist Party also. So do you think this is happening systematically in California? We know that mayors and assembly members and city council members are getting invited to China. Do you think this is common? It's extremely common. I would actually be shocked if there were an official who did not get an invite like that. And it's not just California. This is nationwide. I mean, in New York, I've investigated two different officials who were tied in with these things. One of them, of course, being John Liu, the former New York City Comptroller. He actually faced FBI investigations when he was running for mayor several years back. We could talk about 2012. And what happened was it turned out there were Chinese individuals in the Chinese communities who were getting straw donors for him. It turned out one of the individuals was the former head of the Peking Association, which is one of the main Chinese Communist Party aligned front groups in New York City. The other one who was arrested and actually sentenced was the daughter of the head of the Peking Association. And the head of that organization was tied in with the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, one of the espionage branches of the Chinese Communist Party. At the time, they were even saying they were trying to push him into higher office. There was a chance he could have become president. Of course, John Liu, the investigations were stopped before they could go all the way. The FBI, during the trials, they actually claimed that they probably could have put him behind bars, have the investigation not been stopped preemptively. Basically, New York Times blew the lid on the investigation, and the FBI had to preemptively end their investigation because of what the New York Times did. This is nationwide, and I'll also point to the bigger picture of it. This is part of what's called the United Front. Deng Xiaoping, Xi Jinping, Mao Zedong, they all push the same agenda. Mao used to call it the magic weapon of the Chinese Communist Party. Xi Jinping, current head of the CCP, he's saying the same thing. What they do is they call it capturing the civil society. The civil society is basically the leaders of the country. If you can control the politicians, if you can control the investors, if you can control the businesses, just the heads of the businesses, control the journalists or maybe the businesses funding the media, you effectively control the country. They have a full-time system operating full-scale. Jamestown Foundation identified over a thousand front groups in the United States carrying this out as we speak, and they're doing this as a full-time job. Compromising, blackmailing, bribing, everything. Members of government, leaders of major businesses, journalists, the whole nine yards. What's the impact of this for Californians? We know that she was sharing some information, propaganda information, pro-Chinese Communist Party. Some people might say, so what? It's not really impacting us in California. What are your thoughts on that? It's a difference of allegiances. One of the reasons why you need to disclose if you're acting as a foreign agent or if you have some weird agreement like this, is because there's concern over whether you're serving the American people or serving a foreign government. For the CCP, that's why they want to do this. It's one of the main goals of the United Front. The goal is to have people in leadership positions, whether it's business, whether it's information, whether it's government, serving the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. What you end up with is a puppet state. The businesses are not serving America, they're serving China. The politicians are not serving America, they're serving China. That means policy coming down, whether it's business policy or government policy, is not working on behalf of the American people, it's working on behalf of a foreign government. In this case, the Chinese Communist Party. Is this trickling in other parts of the government? It's at every single layer. It is from the President of the United States, I don't know about Trump, but they will target them at least, down to your local city council members. It is every senator, every congress member, every member of the local legislature, your local sheriff to your local DA. Every single elected official, for the most part, will be targeted in some way by this organization. It is important to disclose just because they've been targeted doesn't mean they're all Chinese spies. A lot of them turn it down. A lot of them have even disclosed that the CCP tried compromising them. I remember, for example, in Southern California, one of the main officials out in Santee, I believe, disclosed the CCP was trying to influence him like this. He made it public. There have been a lot of elected officials who've done that and said, Look, we're not for sale. You're not going to pressure us. You're not going to compromise us. But it's also in business. It's not even just the leaders of the companies. It's every C-suite executive. It's going to be your IT guys. It's going to be anybody deemed to have access to sensitive information. There was an issue just recently in Congress where one of the staffers of a member of Congress disclosed that he was offered $10,000 to work on behalf of the CCP to be passing this Chinese Communist Party agent, insider information and legislation. So even the staffers are targeted. We know this. It's also every level of the institutions of government. The CCP will, of course, want to infiltrate FBI. They want to infiltrate the DOJ. They want to infiltrate the military. I know, for example, there's a huge problem, and I know there are some people working in Intel who are really concerned about it. In America, you do not need to be an American citizen to join the military. And it's actually a pathway to citizenship. And they've had issues where there's lines around the building, I've been told in some places, of Chinese nationals registering to join the American armed forces. And they're really worried about that also. So Josh, this whole investigation started because Aileen Yuan's campaign manager got indicted first. Can you tell us how this whole thing started? Well, it actually goes back to what was happening in New York. And so basically, there were Chinese agents trying to export human rights abuses onto American soil. There was a Chinese agent who tried paying off an IRS agent, turned out to be an undercover FBI agent, but tried paying off an IRS agent to repeal the non-profit status of Shenyam Performing Arts, which is a New York-based performing arts company. The CCP hates Shenyam, tries to threaten them all the time, tries to stop their shows. And the reason is Shenyam presents the culture that China's been trying to destroy, the Chinese Communist Party's trying to destroy, the real culture of more traditional China. And Shenyam Performing Arts also shows human rights abuses taking place in China. The CCP hates that. And so they actually tried to influence what they believed was an IRS agent to actually launch an investigation and to go after the non-profit status. Now again, that IRS agent turned out to be an undercover FBI agent, and the Chinese agent that tried doing that ended up facing criminal charges. And through the, let's call it the domino effect of this, you then had Eileen Wong get wrapped into it because these people were associates, like one person leads to the next. But this raises a bigger kind of red flag, maybe pun intended on this, which is this. This shows that the CCP is not just trying to do propaganda here. Eileen Wong, for example, she's really discharged for publishing propaganda trying to deny human rights abuses in China, saying, hey, you know, there's no genocide here. It also involves the CCP trying to influence American law, and it involves the CCP trying to manipulate our legal system to export Chinese human rights abuses here. They're trying to export their suppression here. They're trying to weaponize our government here against groups the CCP doesn't like, which is terrifying. We shouldn't confuse the Chinese Communist Party with the Chinese people. A lot of the targets of this are Chinese Americans. You know, some of the biggest targets of this are people among the Chinese community, whether it's Muslims or Falun Gong practitioners or democracy activists or house Christians even now. They're facing a lot of pressure. The Chinese Communist Party has five no-go topics. So five issues of the CCP that if you talk about diplomatically, basically the Chinese delegate just stands up and walks out of the room. Also for news outlets, if you talk about it, you're probably going to get booted out of China. So these used to be Hong Kong independence. That was a big one that's kind of changed now because, you know, the CCP has taken over Hong Kong. If you talk about that, there's still some no-go areas within that, but it's a bit more gray. Another one is Taiwanese independence. You know, whether Taiwan is a country, that's another no-go topic. The persecution of Tibetans is a topic. So you can't talk about the genocide in Tibet. You also can't talk about the genocide of Muslim Uyghurs and you cannot talk about the persecution of Falun Gong. The persecution of Falun Gong is actually one of the largest ones because some news outlets to varying degrees because it's so much in American headlines, they might talk about, you know, the abuse of Uyghurs. You might notice they barely talk about Tibet now. Taiwan is a bit more accepted because of, you know, U.S. diplomacy, but Falun Gong, you'll see most media don't talk about it. And if they do, it's almost entirely from the CCP's standpoint, just CCP propaganda. You know, so the reason is this. In China, you have many different ethnic groups. China is not a singular culture. The CCP is trying to basically eliminate a lot of the smaller groups. And, you know, they're trying to make it so the Han Chinese and the CCP's narrative around that is the only acceptable culture in China. A lot of the issues we talked about, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, they're regional, right? They're regional. Falun Gong is not regional. Falun Gong was across all of China. Every single ethnic group, every single level of influence, whether it's your farmers or your Communist Party leaders or your military leaders, every single person probably had a family member who was practicing because by 1999, there were an estimated 70 million to 100 million people practicing. Like, if you weren't practicing, someone in your family probably was. And so the CCP deemed that a threat to the Chinese Communist Party. They actually framed it as a threat to the atheistic rule of the Communist Party. And they said the values of Zhen Shan Ren, which is truthfulness, benevolence, and forbearance, which are, you know, the cornerstones of Falun Gong, it's really more of like a moral practice with like a Tai Chi-type movement, right? People go to the park and practice in the mornings and then hold themselves to moral standards. The CCP said that was a threat to the Communist Party itself because, again, the values of being honest, of being kind, of being forbearant, they go against the kind of ideology of struggle that the CCP promotes. And also because it was so influential, the leaders of the CCP, mainly just at the time Jiang Zemin, even the other members of the Politburo didn't want to be persecuted. They said it was actually good at the time for social cohesion. It was reducing medical costs. It was actually good for the country. But the former head of the CCP, Jiang Zemin, said, well, persecute it anyway. One of the reasons we don't fully know what his thinking was, but it's gone around pretty heavily, that he was jealous of it because he felt that they were kind of stealing his fire, so to speak. And so for the CCP, this is a major topic. And Falun Gong practitioners have kind of launched a campaign to expose the human rights abuse and have been very successful on that. And the CCP just despises it. The CCP has been trying to stop it and silence it everywhere, which is the nature of a lot of these cases we're seeing where Chinese agents get caught trying to go after Chinese people living abroad. That's a big part of what we're seeing. Can you tell us more about this? So they want to stop a show like Shen Yun, which they're a sponsor of this show. I enjoy going to watching this performance. It's an amazing performance. What are they trying to do? Well, you know, the Chinese Communist Party has actually in its military code something called the Three Warfares. And this is important because I mentioned the United Front. The United Front works with the political warfare branch of the Chinese military. They actually have a branch of their government tied to waging war through political means. It's also tied with the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, which manages overseas Chinese and their networks. It's also tied with the propaganda department. Not to sound like too much information at once. You can kind of understand that between military, government, intelligence, it's all kind of intertwined in China. And information is actually a key component of this. Information is not just media. Information is not just propaganda. Information is political interest. It's legislation interest. It's trade interest. It's suppression of human rights groups. And it works alongside other agendas, which is why I've mentioned the Three Warfares. So the Three Warfares adopted into Chinese military code. It's, again, information war, legal war, and kind of the war for narrative. So the way they define it is this. Psychological warfare to change the way you interpret information. So do you believe that there's a genocide in China against whether Muslims or maybe organ harvesting? Do you believe that's taking place? Well, that would be one of their goals is to change the perception of that against perception warfare or psychological warfare. They have media warfare, which is the controlling of outlets of information. So that could mean influencing a news outlet. Maybe you get a journalist into a news outlet and you have them run propaganda for you. Maybe it means you pressure the advertisers of media to force them to not talk about certain issues. Maybe it means that you influence a social media platform to de-platform somebody who you don't like, maybe a journalist or a YouTuber or something like that, which we've seen happen. And then, of course, there's legal warfare, which is kind of the more scary part of all this. Aside from censorship, there's legal warfare. And legal warfare means manipulating the legal systems of countries to actually carry out punishment. They use the legal systems to carry out abuses. And so that can mean triggering investigations. That can mean overwhelming someone with frivolous lawsuits. That can mean accusing somebody of things and charging them through international courts. It can mean on the broader scale, maybe more so outside the United States, even influencing Interpol. And remember the former head of Interpol, the international police under the UN? The former head of Interpol was actually punished. He was Chinese, punished by the CCP because he was not using Interpol enough to work in the interests of the CCP. The CCP still influences them, even influencing Interpol in their use of red cards, for example, triggering criminal action against people. That's a part of it. So, you know, they're trying to actually influence the legal systems of countries to work as the tools to export abuses. And media and information is one of the ways that they kind of trigger these investigations. A lot of people we've brought on the show are government officials, city council members, mayors, and state representatives. A lot of them might have gone to China, but they don't really know that this is what the Chinese Communist Party's intentions are. The media hasn't done much to cover any of this, a little bit. Can you tell us why? I would actually assume that some media are being pressured. And I'll give you some clear examples of this. You know, back in 2008, ahead of the Beijing Olympics, a lot of media were actually a little more harsh on the CCP. One example, Bloomberg, they were criticizing the CCP. They were talking about human rights abuses leading up to the Olympics. The Chinese Communist Party actually punished Bloomberg, and they were threatening Bloomberg media. And what they did was they threatened to pull out or ban Bloomberg financial terminals from China. So targeting kind of a side business in order to go after the news industry, right? They're different businesses. And Bloomberg actually folded. They came out and they said, effectively, we're not going to talk about these issues anymore because the CCP made a financial threat. I mean, we've seen this with, you know, the NBA. Ennis Cantor Freedom, very famous basketball player, was actually punished for writing a message against slavery. And, you know, you can kneel on the court and protest slavery against America, but he protested slavery of Muslim Uyghurs in China, and he was punished for that. So how is it you can criticize historical slavery in the United States, but if you criticize today, modern day slavery, you get punished? Like, what logic is this? It's because the CCP influences the business of the NBA. And so they do this. We've also seen a lot of journalists, you know, news outlets that have bases in China, and that's a lot of the mainstream ones. They have guardrails up. They don't talk about certain issues because if they do, they get kicked out of China. And the other problem is too, in the United States, about, you know, most media is controlled by about five corporations. They're trying to consolidate now to about two corporations. But that also means that financial interests, parent companies, investment firms, if they have business in China, the CCP pressures them in order to silence the news outlets. So there's a lot of stuff you cannot even hear for most media when it comes to this. So people that are watching this, what can they do? Well, I mean, you can raise some alarms about it. You know, the hard reality is a lot of this targets information. So, you know, what do you do about information? I mean, you know, not to ring our own bell here, but, you know, the Epoch Times, of course, we were kind of founded to stand up against censorship like this. You know, we were kind of blacklisted everywhere because we've dared say that to speak the truth. And I think we're pretty good examples of what happens, the kind of punishment you face when you dare to speak the truth, especially against the CCP. So, you know, subscribe to the Epoch Times, support us. I think that's a good way to do it. Also help get the word out. You know, you have the power to post it on social media. You can tell your friends about it. You can maybe alert your local officials that this is something you're concerned about. You know, a good cornerstone of the American system is actually civic engagement. I think if we disengage from that, we no longer are really following the system of government we have. The American system is based around the involvement of the American people in the political system. That's what our government is. So I would hope that, you know, people are concerned about it, they can take action on their own part by doing that. Do you have people be more suspicious when they hear about news on China or when they see an article about China? Do you recommend people to question what they see? Absolutely. There's a lot of false information out there. The hard reality is a lot of news outlets, to varying degrees, are covering up or even serving the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. A lot of the major publications, they actually publish inserts of actual, direct Chinese state-run propaganda. A lot of news outlets will not tell you the whole story on human rights abuses. Some of them carry water for the CCP, even assisting the Chinese Communist Party and going after groups, you know, Falun Gong, for example. Some of the hit pieces we've seen on this, we find there are deep ties to the CCP behind some of these hit pieces. I mean, the list goes on. And the other side, too, is there's also a lot of financial interest. Some of these companies, their parent companies or investors, have a lot of interest in China. And so they're going to want to present information that serves that interest. Not all media is just purely, you know, honest. And that's a hard reality today. And that does mean that a lot of information they have, especially when it comes to China, is not accurate. So, Josh, we have a lot of Chinese-Americans in California. And a lot of Chinese-Americans, they contribute a lot to the society. We have some of the top engineers, top leaders, excellent workers. They contribute to California. What do you recommend to Californians? How can people know somebody's working for the CCP and somebody's not? And are there Chinese-Americans that might be kind of working for the CCP but not knowing it? There's a lot of that. There's unfortunately a lot of that. And it's mixed. Because, I mean, look, I have a lot of friends who are Chinese. Some of the most patriotic people I know for the United States are Chinese. A lot of the human rights activists, people warning about the threats of the CCP, a lot of it's coming from the Chinese community. And they're really the big targets of this. They're the ones who face the most abuse from the CCP. They're the ones who really need help. But also, unfortunately, the CCP also tries to influence their communities. I think if you want to have some red flags, let's call it, look at whether or not they're members of TONGS, T-O-N-G-S, fraternal organizations, friendship organizations. Not all TONGS are working with the CCP, but a lot of them do. And so you should ask about TONG affiliation. Also looking to see whether they're part of, for example, student groups. CSSAs, Chinese Student and Scholar Associations, is a big one. It's mixed, though, and here's why. The CSSAs, they're at every major American university. They're openly funded by and operated by the Chinese consulates. This is one of the ways the CCP tries to grow spies to infiltrate business and government. The problem you have with the CSSAs is they involuntarily enroll Chinese students when they come here. And the CCP does that to actually monitor Chinese. They do it to monitor the students. In terms of government officials and state leaders, a lot of them watch the show. Is there a way to go after these TONGS and separate them from the Communist Party? Well, the CSSAs, no. Those are managed totally by the CCP. There can be other Chinese clubs or whatever that I think should be fine. But the CSSAs specifically are managed by the Chinese consulates, and openly so, openly managed. When it comes to the TONGS, Jamestown Foundation actually just did a fantastic report on it. They identified about 1,000 TONGS operating in the United States that are actually working with the Chinese Communist Party's United Front. And that should work as a good roadmap to say, OK, what are the TONGS that are working for the CCP, and what can we do about them? Just so people know how this works, in San Diego, Dalai Lama was supposed to speak in the University of San Diego, and some of these student groups started protesting it. Then the university president found out. They went and checked their emails, and they realized they were working directly with the Chinese consulate. Because their email was the .edu email from the university, so they had the right to check it. Right, that was at a UCSD. That was a good while back, but yeah. That's a clear example of how the CCP organizes Chinese students to create incidents, protests, make it appear that this is offensive to the Chinese people. Even within the Chinese community, government officials will deal with this very often. They'll get letters, emails saying, what you said about China is offensive, this is a sensitive topic for the Chinese people. And they use these kinds of narratives to try to shut down discussions on human rights. Why is it that having the Dalai Lama should be offensive to the Chinese people, which is what the Chinese students were saying, when the CCP is persecuting the Tibetans? Isn't the CCP offensive to the Chinese people if they're actually persecuting people and denying religious liberties? So I think it's important to read between the lines, especially when you're receiving pressure saying something is offensive, saying it hurts the feelings of the Chinese people, or butt out, this is a Chinese issue. The CCP and their agents use those kinds of language in order to silence people. So we have to be more careful when we are seeing things that are about China. Pay more attention. Senior investigative journalist with Epoch Times, Joshua Phillip, it was great to have you back on California Insider. Always a pleasure, thank you. What do you think about this conversation with Josh? Do you think there is a lot of influence from China in California? And do you have any thoughts on how to deal with this influence? You can always email us at siamak.californiansider.com or comment. We read all of your emails and comments. I'm Siamak Khorrami, this is California Insider, we'll see you next time.