The arrest of a former top aide to New York governor Kathy Hochul is yet another sign that Americans need to wise up about the Chinese Communist Party’s subversion campaigns on U.S. soil, and fast.
The arrest on Tuesday of Linda Sun, a former deputy chief of staff to Hochul, and her husband, Chris Hu, yielded a treasure trove of insights about Beijing’s extensive influence campaign.
The 64-page indictment charges Sun with crimes relating to her work as an unregistered foreign agent, for which she and Hu accepted payment via companies they operated in China — and in the form of over a dozen salted ducks that the Chinese consulate shipped to Sun’s parents.
The degree to which Sun succeeded in her aims is shocking.
In court documents, the FBI and Justice Department described a sweeping, yearslong campaign in which Sun acted under the direction of the Chinese consulate general and components of the CCP’s vast political-influence ecosystem, called the united front.
For years, Sun manipulated Hochul and, before that, former governor Andrew Cuomo, into toeing Beijing’s line in Albany.
She first entered state government in 2012, then worked her way up, serving across different roles that involved Asian outreach, economic development, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and, at the end, New York’s labor department.
Working hand in glove with unnamed Chinese diplomats in Manhattan, she succeeded in blocking Taiwan from forging ties with New York State, preventing Hochul from speaking out about the Uyghur genocide, and inducing Cuomo to say glowing things about China’s consulate during the Covid crisis.
Along the way, Sun acquired a secret title within a united-front organ — the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese — and acquired property on Long Island and Hawaii valued at millions of dollars.
Hochul and Cuomo were apparently duped, as Sun clearly took pains to conceal her efforts from her colleagues. At one point, in early 2020, she secretly looped a Chinese diplomat into a conference call for New York officials about the state’s pandemic-response efforts.
But the two governors made themselves easy marks. Beijing’s malign intentions, and its extensive political-influence schemes, were public knowledge.
Still, Hochul saw fit to repeatedly participate in events with the China General Chamber of Commerce USA, an industry group for Chinese state-owned firms.
Despite widely documented information about the CCP’s atrocities against Uyghurs, she also continued to pal around with Chinese consul general Huang Ping, marching with him in a parade just days after China’s military flew a surveillance balloon over the United States.
And last August, Hochul sent one of her staffers, Elaine Fan, to represent the governor’s office at a celebration organized by a united-front organization at a baseball game — just months after her staff terminated Sun and referred her activities to federal law enforcement.
On Wednesday, in an attempt to save face, Hochul said that she had asked the State Department to expel Huang. (Foggy Bottom later claimed that Huang had left his post in August, at the end of a regularly scheduled rotation.)
Congress and the New York State legislature now ought to initiate probes into Hochul’s handling of the matter.
The New York governor has already spoken out against a new probe, by pointing to the federal investigation. While federal law enforcement is doing its part to tackle the criminal misconduct, that’s not enough. Congress should initiate a series of hearings into the activities of united front–linked actors in New York and across America. Lawmakers need to follow the facts wherever they lead, no matter how uncomfortable it makes the administration and China-friendly politicians.
Additional schemes of a similar nature are likely to come to light in the months and years ahead. A proper investigation will help Americans understand just how pervasive these activities are.
Political leaders have turned a blind eye to the machinations of the Chinese Communist Party’s united front for too long. The indictment of Sun shows, once again, the risks of such complacency.