By Philip Yeung
I feel so sad and sorry for Eileen Wang, mayor of Arcadia, southern California. She has been charged with acting as "an illegal foreign agent of China". For pleading guilty to one count, she could face up to 10 years in prison.
Her crime? Posting on her website an opinion piece at the request of PRC officials who tried to answer the trumped-up charges against China of committing genocide or "forced labor" in cotton production in Xinjiang.
Republishing a pro-China article is just a harmless PR move that comes under the rubric of freedom of speech, when she believes that China is innocent of baseless charges.
Ms. Wang, together with Mr. Mike Sun, ran the US News Center that reached out to the Chinese American community with its tiny, limited circulation. There was nothing earth-shattering or underhanded in sharing these articles online. It was all out there in the open. No cloak-and-dagger stuff.
Not having access to state secrets, she had nothing sensitive to spill or share. US national interest is intact.
And all this happened before December 2022, when she became mayor of Arcadia, a tiny backwater county municipality of just 54,000. After a thorough internal review, it has been unequivocally established that "no city finances, staff or decision-making processes" were in any way compromised.
The benefit to China of posting an opinion piece, if any, remains highly doubtful, as any official communication from Chinese officials is always taken with a large pinch of salt.
America is supposedly a country that guarantees freedom of speech. If Ms Wang truly believed that China had been wronged, why was she not allowed to air views or help air views that flow from her beliefs? Clearing China's good name does not detract from the US national well-being. It may help repair or restore a healthy bilateral relationship.
If Ms Wang had been distributing articles for Israel to help clear it of charges of genocide in Gaza, she would have been left untouched and unmolested. She might even be cited for a Presidential Medal of Freedom for coming to the defense of the state of Israel.
If you go strictly by the warnings from Justice Department officials, that "Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent." I wonder how many US senators and Congress members should be charged with treason for aiding and abetting the state of Israel to hijack US foreign policies, pumping billions of taxpayer dollars and deadly bombs into Israel to murder Palestinians by the tens of thousands. They have done America grievous harm and dragged its image through mud.
That is real irreparable damage. Boring opinion pieces don't even hurt a fly.
The allegation against Ms Wang refers to her activities before assuming her mayor's role.
The Justice Department is instead charging a US citizen for exercising her First Amendment Rights that hurts no American national interest. But this had already led to her co-accused Mike Sun being sentenced to four years in federal prison for pleading to a similar charge.
The moral here: If you are a plain-vanilla US citizen of Chinese descent, however sympathetic to China's plight of being falsely accused of human rights violations in its own country, do not go into politics.
What you say or do before you take office to aid China's image repair will come back to bite you. Acting according to your conscience will either land you in jail as a traitor, or worse, a spy.
Better leave that heavy-duty lifting job to untouchable multibillionaire political donors like Elon Musk. They are protected by the color of their skin, the weight of their political clout and the thickness of their wallets.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews. You can also contact the author via email at PKY480@gmail.com.
Read more articles by Philip Yeung:
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Opinion | How King Charles's speech conquers the US Congress—viewed from China by a speechwriter
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