Eric Adams Advisers Traveled in China with Suspected Chinese Police-Station Agent

The NYC mayoral administration’s ties to the alleged Chinese operative are closer than previously disclosed, NR has learned.

T wo longtime advisers to New York City mayor Eric Adams traveled in China with one of the defendants in the U.S. Justice Department’s case against an illegal Chinese-government-run police station that operated in Manhattan, National Review has learned.

The presence of that individual, Jianwang “Harry” Lu, on the 2019 trip to China — before Adams became mayor — alongside members of Adams’s inner circle indicates that his administration has closer ties to the defendant than it has disclosed. Lu was arrested in April on charges related to operating the police station and doing the Chinese government’s bidding.

His participation in the trip is being reported here for the first time. He is believed by federal prosecutors to have entered into a “relationship of trust” with the Chinese government, stretching back to at least 2015, after which he assisted Beijing’s efforts to hunt down Chinese dissidents in America.

The Adams advisers who were on the trip are among his top political aides: Winnie Greco, Adams’s longtime Asian-community-outreach director, and former New York state senator Jesse Hamilton. In a statement to National Review, City Hall defended Greco at length, but did not address Hamilton, Lu, or the 2019 trip specifically.

“Winnie Greco is a dedicated public servant who has worked tirelessly to build relationships between the Adams administration and Asian-New Yorkers, ensuring their voices and needs are heard,” Adams spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak said.

City Hall’s comments also seemed to address allegations from a recent New York Post story that Greco had acted as a “consultant” for Beijing-backed groups: “She is not a consultant for anything – or anyone – and only serves this administration and the 8.3 million New Yorkers who call this city home. Any insinuation otherwise is nothing short of fearmongering, unfounded, and only contributes to unwarranted prejudice towards the Asian community that has already endured far too much hostility in the last few years.”

National Review also left voicemails for Greco and Hamilton requesting comment. Lu’s lawyer did not respond to an email requesting comment.

News of the Adams administration’s proximity to Lu comes amid a broader reckoning about the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in America. In recent years, the State Department, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, and other federal agencies have issued warnings that sister-city agreements and other seemingly innocuous cultural exchanges are in fact conduits of malign CCP influence.

After Lu’s arrest, FBI officials told reporters that Chinese harassment often goes hand in hand with efforts to influence the political process in America. The Justice Department and the FBI declined National Review’s requests for comment.

Greco and Hamilton both assisted Adams in unofficial capacities during his time as Brooklyn Borough president and as he prepared to run for mayor. Then, after Adams’s election, Greco joined the mayoral administration in a paid role as special adviser and director of Asian affairs in January 2022. Hamilton was hired later that year to join the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, initially as legal counsel then later as deputy commissioner.

Although she has represented Adams at cultural events, Greco isn’t only a cultural ambassador; she plays a key role in Adams’s political operation, ensuring that Adams has a bridge to New York’s Chinese-American voters. In 2021, she accompanied him to a Chinese community fundraiser, where she urged people to vote for him. City Hall views her as a vital liaison to Asian Americans in New York.

Greco and Hamilton also apparently played a role in conducting the borough government’s outreach to Fuzhou, the capital city of China’s Fujian Province.

In May 2019,  Greco, Hamilton, Lu, and Li Jinyu, a manager with Fujian Tanghuang CNC Company, arrived in Fuzhou’s Gulou district, presenting themselves as a delegation representing the Brooklyn Borough government.

This delegation toured a local school, taking part in a calligraphy class, and then visited the newsroom of the state-owned Fujian Daily newspaper’s Southeast Network, according to articles from the outlet and video from the trip posted online and reviewed by NR.

They also held a meeting with various city officials, discussing how to build closer ties between Brooklyn and Gulou. According to the Southeast Network article, the two districts are sister cities.

At the meeting, Greco and Hamilton sat directly across from Chinese officials, such as acting Gulou district mayor Huang Jianxin, the highest-ranking Chinese official in the room, and Xu Jintai, a member of Gulou’s standing committee and a minister with the United Front Work Department — a Chinese Communist Party bureau tasked with influencing non-party members in China and across the world.

“We want to have more diversity and cultural exchange between Gulou, Fuzhou, and Brooklyn,” Hamilton said in the video. “Winnie has been working now for two borough presidents and has been the driving force behind the diversity in Brooklyn,” he added.

Greco also served as the Asian-American community liaison for Adams’s predecessor, Marty Markowitz. “When Borough president Eric Adams becomes the mayor, Winnie will be one of the driving forces behind the voice of the Asian community,” he said.

Hamilton also tapped Harry Lu on the shoulder and told the Chinese side that he “has been great with the Fujianese congregation in New York City.”

Hamilton may have been referring to Lu’s leadership role in the America ChangLe Association, a cultural nonprofit group that represents immigrants from China’s Fujian Province. Lu and his co-defendant Chen Jinping both held leadership roles in that group at the time of their arrests this year. Harry Lu’s brother, Jianshun “Jimmy” Lu, was president of the group in 2022.

Federal prosecutors allege that Harry Lu and Chen had illegally opened and operated the police station out of the America ChangLe Association’s office on behalf of China’s Ministry of Public Security, and that this was part of a plot to target Chinese dissidents across the U.S.

The Justice Department’s criminal complaint further claims that Harry Lu started working with the Chinese government when in 2015 he helped China’s consulate in New York City mobilize members of his association to join a counterprotest against Falun Gong practitioners;  the latter were protesting the 2015 visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Washington, D.C.

Starting in 2018, according to prosecutors, Lu and an unnamed co-conspirator worked with the Chinese government and the Ministry of Public Security to locate Chinese dissidents in the U.S., and one of the victims told the FBI that he or she had been harassed by the America ChangLe Association.

While the criminal complaint notes some of Lu’s travels to China, neither his participation in the 2019 trip nor his relationship with the Adams advisers is mentioned. It’s not clear who funded the trip.

Adams’s ties to Lu have been the focus of public scrutiny. In September 2022, he and Greco attended the America ChangLe Association’s annual gala.

City Hall asserts that Adams and Greco were not aware of the allegations against America ChangLe at that time and that their attendance was outreach to one of the city’s communities rather than an endorsement of the group.

Adams also received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Jimmy Lu throughout his mayoral campaign. After Harry Lu was arrested, Adams’s office said that it would return the funds and that Adams does not know either of the Lu brothers.

Beyond the 2019 trip, the Adams-led Brooklyn government and officials from Fujian have interacted on other occasions, Southeast Network articles show. In 2017, Greco was present at a gathering in Manhattan to greet a delegation of officials from the city.

Then, in August 2019, after the trip, deputy Brooklyn Borough president Ingrid Lewis-Martin — another top Adams political aide who now serves as his chief adviser — greeted a delegation of officials from Fujian’s Nanping City at Brooklyn Borough Hall. Greco and Jimmy Lu were also at the meeting. Greco has long facilitated exchanges between New York officials and their Chinese counterparts. She was involved in a highly scrutinized, years-long project to build a Chinese “friendship archway” in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood, leading a nonprofit group dedicated to that effort.

The archway project eventually failed, as Chinese government entities that promised funding withdrew their support. Questions remain about the sources of funding for a 2014 trip that Adams took to China sponsored by Greco’s friendship-archway group.

City Hall asserts that Adams takes the CCP’s threats very seriously, even as Greco and Adams have attended Chinese government-linked events in New York City throughout Adams’s time as mayor. Last month, they took part in a dragon-boat race in Queens sponsored by the government of Hong Kong, which is controlled by Beijing. Human-rights advocates condemned Adams’s participation.

The New York Post reported this week that Greco was listed as a “consultant” to a pro-Beijing group and to the Southeast Network and that she and Adams have held multiple meetings with the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC). In 2020, the State Department said that CPAFFC is a United Front Work Department entity that “malignly” influences state and local leaders to promote Beijing’s interests.

Hamilton, meanwhile, used his time in the state senate to boost New York’s ties with China, including by effusively praising China’s then–consul general in New York on the chamber’s floor.