Thread by @james_t_quinn

🧵Ten things you might not know about the Chinese Communist Party’s ties to New York politicians, including NYC mayor Eric Adams, Rep. Grace Meng, and New York GOP officials.

A few notes from my previous reporting on the topic, in light of Linda Sun's arrest this week, in no particular order.

1 . Linda Sun is not the only former Hochul aide whom the governor sent to pro-Beijing events in New York on her behalf.

Former Hochul director of Asian Affairs Elaine Fan participated in the “Evening of Chinese Culture” at a Mets game last year, an annual event organized by the Sino-American Friendship Association (SAFA).

SAFA has extensive ties to the Chinese government and is run by former Chinese officials. (Former?) Chinese consul general Huang Ping attended the annual event every year.

Fan also represented Hochul at other Chinese-government-linked events, including a dragon-boat festival in Queens backed by Hong Kong’s government earlier this month. She is now the campaign manager for Scott Stringer, a candidate for NYC mayor.

2. After reports found that individuals linked to the illegal Chinese police station in Manhattan had donated to NYC mayor Eric Adams's campaign, his team said of one of the men arrested, Lu Jianwang, that "the mayor does not know this individual."

But according to documents from Adams’s 2014 trip to China in his capacity as Brooklyn Borough president, he participated in a meeting with Lu in the city of Fuzhou.

3. New York GOP political figures have also traveled to China, as recently as last year. A delegation led by William Barclay, the GOP’s minority leader in the state assembly, was funded by a local organization.

That group’s founder is John Chan, a prominent CCP activist in NYC who has led PRC flag-raising ceremonies and pro-Beijing demonstrations linked to the Chinese consulate general in Manhattan.

An official from the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries — a CCP organ that @mikepompeo has accused of “malignly influencing” U.S. officials — traveled with the Barclay/ Chan delegation across China.

4. John Chan has at least one official role within a prominent CCP body: In March, he traveled to China as an overseas delegate for the Chinese People’s Political and Consultative Conference (the man with glasses in the pic below is Chan, sitting at a CPPCC meeting).

That organ coordinates the messaging of China’s “united front” political-influence system.

Before he departed for China, Chan received a visit from FBI agents, who interviewed him for two hours at his office in Brooklyn.

5. Rep. Grace Meng called one John Chan-led organization a “tireless advocate for the Asian-American Community” during a 2018 event. There, she presented Chan with an award.

The next year, she was listed as an honorary co-sponsor at an event hosted by a different Chan-led group to celebrate the 40th anniversary of U.S.-China normalization.

Meng later told me that she was not previously aware of Chan’s political ideology and asserted that he never lobbied her on China-related issues. She said that she frequently attends community events and that Chan is a well-known community leader.

6. Meng and Adams both participated in a dragon boat festival event organized last year by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, the NYC diplomatic outpost of Hong Kong’s authoritarian government.

There are calls by human rights groups and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to shut down HKETOs in America.

Meng chose to attend the festival despite receiving a letter from Hong Konger pro-democracy organizations alerting her to its ties to the CCP-controlled government of the city.

Adams attended the event with his senior adviser and Asian affairs director Winnie Greco.

7. Greco, who is reportedly the subject of a federal probe, traveled to China in 2019, bringing Lu Jianwang to a meeting with officials from Fuzhou. That was years after Lu is alleged to have entered into a relationship of trust with the Chinese government.

Lu’s participation in the meeting with Greco suggests that his ties to Eric Adams’s inner circle stretch back many years. Greco was also at the 2014 meeting in which Adams and Lu both participated.

8. Hochul is not the only New York politician who enjoyed a warm working relationship with Chinese consul general Huang Ping (at least, before she called for his expulsion last week bc of his role in the Linda Sun scheme).

Adams also enjoyed a friendly relationship with Huang, appearing with him in public numerous times as mayor, including at a gala in NYC organized by a subsidiary of the CCP’s central propaganda department.

Adams attended an event with Huang last year that featured a Chinese flag-raising ceremony to mark the PRC's founding.

Adams “is doubling down on his connection with CCP-affiliated groups,” @ZhouFengSuo , a Chinese dissident and leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, told me.

9. When then-Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen visited NYC in March 2023, Huang aggressively lobbied City Hall against sending Adams and other senior officials to a banquet she headlined.

He wrote in a letter I obtained: “I would like to remind the New York City government of paying more attention to our concerns and dealing with Taiwan Question with extra caution.”

Adams did not attend the banquet, and City Hall did not respond to requests for comment asking about the situation.

10. Long before the Linda Sun case, and Hochul’s call for Huang’s expulsion, it was public knowledge that officials from the Chinese consulate general worked on political-influence and transnational repression schemes in the U.S.

In the Chinese police-station indictment last year, the DOJ revealed that several senior Chinese consular officials visited the police outpost after it opened in 2022.

My latest: On Mayor Adams’s embrace of subnational exchanges with China—which the intelligence community has warned are controlled on the PRC side by CCP political influence organs.