Bombshell accusations that a former aide to New York Govs. Kathy Hochul and Andrew Cuomo acted as a secret agent for China raised alarms Tuesday about a broader effort by the Chinese Communist Party to compromise public officials and infiltrate American governments and society.
Political insiders and watchdog groups pointed to the Brooklyn federal court indictments of Linda Sun and her husband Christopher Hu as showing the extent of China’s spy recruitment apparatus.
“This is a dangerous situation,” warned Ed Cox, the state Republican Party chairman and son-in-law of former President Richard Nixon.
Cox, who visited China with Nixon in 1979, said it was startling to read in the indictment that Sun and her husband allegedly obtained millions of dollars in exchange for pushing the Executive Chamber to toe the CCP line, including undermining Taiwan.
“This is a wake-up call that this kind of Chinese operation is going on in New York State,” he told The Post.
“China is not a friend,” Cox added. “This is a national security issue.”
The CCP isn’t the only foreign government trying to flex its interests in NY and the US.
Iran is reportedly bankrolling groups organizing anti-Israel protests and there is an ongoing federal probe of whether Turkish interests illegally benefitted Mayor Eric Adams’ 2021 election campaign.
But China has the most far reaching spying and influence peddling operation in the US, said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx), who serves on the House Select Committee on the CCP.
“There is no foreign government that has penetrated the United States more deeply and broadly than the Chinese Communist Party. It may have most effective and aggressive espionage operation in human history,” Torres told The Post.
One Queens Democrat, who requested anonymity, said the CCP has a presence in the borough — and he’s mindful of it.
“The CCP is trying to infiltrate. At parades there are signs for the CCP. I don’t won’t be pictured with a sign for the CCP!” the politician said.
Many Chinese-Americans immigrated to the US to flee communist oppression, and there’s sensitivity in the political establishment about unfairly red-baiting an entire community.
But there’s ample evidence of the CCP posting spies and trying to sink hooks into local politicians and segments of the growing Asian population.
Two men last year were charged with running a secret police station in Manhattan on behalf of the Chinese government – arrests that were part of a sweeping federal crackdown on Beijing’s influence campaign in the US.
“Harry” Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping were accused of conspiring to act as agents of China’s government and obstruction of justice for opening the covert outpost in Manhattan’s Chinatown in early 2022.
The case is pending.
“States have very little clue that China is doing all of this,” said Michael Licci, founder of State Armor, an organization that advocates for protecting state governments against foreign adversaries, especially the communist party.
He called the Sun indictment a “black and white” case that is “quite naked and brazen,” whereas the CCP typically operates more subtly in “gray areas.”
One upstate Republican lawmaker called for the creation of a bipartisan state commission to investigate CCP activity in New York following Sun’s indictment.
“That the Chinese Community Party infiltrated the highest levels of state government is surreal, completely unacceptable and deeply unsettling,” said state Sen. Jake Ashby, the ranking member of the committee overseeing homeland security.
But Queens state Sen. John Liu, a native of Taiwan who was the first citywide Asian-elected official when serving as comptroller, said people shouldn’t rush to judgment — and praised Sun, who he’s known for years.
“I’ve worked with Linda Sun for many years and have only known her to be diligent, professional, and conscientious, and she is absolutely innocent until proven otherwise,” Liu said.
“The federal government has a sordid track record of making accusations against accomplished Chinese-Americans, only to later drop all charges, with no regard to lives and careers destroyed needlessly.”
In 2021, the feds charged an NYPD officer with spying on Tibetans on behalf of the Chinese government. But the charges were later dropped.
The influence of the CCP portrayed in the Sun case is “frightening,” said Yiatin Chu, a Republican candidate for the state senate’s 11th District in Queens, and president of the Asian Wave Alliance.
“The CCP is certainly set up in our community. We don’t know with who,” Chu said.
She said the Sun case, on its face, seems to be about greed.
“It’s about money. People can be bought. China tried to buy her off,” Chu, a native of Taiwan who moved here as a child, said.
It’s “disheartening,” she said, because the case could unfairly tarnish the image of Chinese Americans.
“It tars anyone who looks like you. The Chinese community is a conservative, law-abiding community,” Chu said.
