Arrest of Former Top Aide to NY Governor Illustrates Deepening Level of China’s Infiltration, Says Expert

On Tuesday, a former top aide of New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) along with her husband were arrested for working as government agents for China in exchange for millions of dollars in bribe money. Experts say the arrest is the latest example of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) extensive effort to infiltrate the upper echelons of the U.S. government.

Linda Sun, who served as deputy chief of staff for Hochul before being fired for misconduct last year, was charged with working to “further the interests of the Chinese government and the CCP,” which involved her husband Christopher Hu engaging in money laundering from millions of dollars in bribes from the Chinese government.

Sun was able to hide her espionage efforts from Democratic administrations in New York for years, having first been hired in 2012 by former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office. The indictment details how Sun extensively collaborated with the Chinese consulate general in New York, as well as the United Front Work Department, the CCP’s political-influence bureau.

While working for Cuomo, Sun declined an invitation for the former governor to attend a banquet honoring then-Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen in 2019 without consulting executive chamber officials. Other alleged offenses while working for Hochul include forging high-level government invitations to Chinese government officials which prompted the illegal entry of foreign nationals into the U.S., secretly letting a Chinese diplomat listen in on a private conference call for New York officials during the COVID pandemic, manipulating public messages from the governor to edit out references to the CCP’s abuse of the Uyghurs, and falsely claiming to represent the state department of labor after her termination last year.

In return for Sun’s work as an unregistered agent for the Chinese, her husband’s China-based businesses received millions of dollars. The couple “purchased a $3.6 million house on Long Island, a $1.9 million condominium in Honolulu, and luxury cars, including a 2024 model Ferrari.”

Even after Sun was ousted from Hochul’s staff for misconduct last year, the governor continued to participate in activities closely associated with Beijing. At one point, Hochul “marched in an annual parade attended by Chinese diplomats” — including Chinese consul general Huang Ping — “and local pro-Beijing community organizations. Speaking at its opening ceremony, she waved a Chinese flag.” The governor also “saw fit to repeatedly participate in events with the China General Chamber of Commerce USA, an industry group for Chinese state-owned firms.”

The news of Sun’s arrest coincided with the release of an extensive six-month investigation by The Washington Post detailing the level to which agents of the Chinese government were able to control the streets of San Francisco and shut down First Amendment-protected protests against the CCP during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit in November of last year. The report details how “[a]t least 35 pro-CCP Chinese diaspora groups showed up” in San Francisco during Xi’s visit and how “Chinese diplomats hired at least 60 private security guards to ‘protect’” the groups.

The report goes on to describe how the pro-CCP activists instigated “extreme violence” against anti-CCP protestors, attacking them with “extended flagpoles and chemical spray” and were “punched, kicked and had fistfuls of sand thrown in their faces.” As an incentive for the pro-CCP activists to descend on San Francisco, the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles paid for their hotels and meals.

Notably, both of these instances of China’s successful infiltration efforts happened within the Democratic strongholds of New York and California. In comments to The Washington Stand, Gordon Chang, a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the author of numerous books on China, contended that Sun’s arrest is only the tip of the iceberg in the CCP’s efforts to subvert the U.S. government.

“Both political parties have been infiltrated, but the Democratic Party in New York has a special problem because it has seen Chinese-Americans as a rich source of votes and this group has maintained troubling ties to Communist Party front organizations,” he told TWS. “The Democratic Party in that state, consequently, will surely have more Linda Sun scandals.”

Chang further warned that “there will be more Linda Sun scandals elsewhere. China’s penetration of America’s political system has been thorough. Remember, the first time China’s Ministry of State Security contacted [Congressman] Eric Swalwell [D-Calif.] was not when he was on the House Intelligence Committee, where he could have been of great value to China, but when he was sitting on the City Council of Dublin City, California. This is not to say that Swalwell did anything wrong; it is to say, however, that Swalwell could not have been the only person China’s regime had been grooming. There must be hundreds of Swalwells in America, perhaps thousands.”