The 2026 Human Rights Essay Contest is open to students of all ages and offers $4,000 in prize money. The focus for this contest is on the sentencing of human rights activist Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison and how this sentencing should impact U.S.-China relations. Essays must be submitted by June 15th. For more information, visit humanrights.catholic.edu.
Will Deatherage: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China. My name My name is Will Deatherage, the producer, and joining me as always is Chen Guangcheng.
Chen Guangcheng: Hello everyone, I’m glad to see you here again. Thank you, Will.
W: Yeah, and as of recording this, it’s May of 2026, and a big topic in the headlines in American news right now is Chinese spies and foreign influence sneaking their way into American governance, right, Guangcheng?
G: Yes, yes, that is very big news now. A lot of people focus on it online.
W: So we’ve got a couple of stories to cover today. Guangcheng, how about we talk first about the police station in New York.
G: Yeah, that is one person. His name is Lu Jianwang, and he is a Tibetan person. And before he worked in [a] police station, but he helped the CCP in New York and helped them to create a secret police station in New York.
W: Guangcheng, when you say a “secret police station,” what do you mean? Like, what would they do?
G: These police stations operated as surveillance units for the CCP. They just obey the CCP’s orders. The police station never registered in our government. Like [the] Mafia. Because they try to give the activists trouble here. And if they have human rights events, they would order the police to threaten them, to harass them.
Yeah, sometimes they give the families pressure to go back to mainland China, and then punish them. This is just one thing, but the CCP did a lot [of other things] like this. Now Lu Jianwang, the court will sentence him to prison.
W: Right. Guangcheng, how long was this police station operating for?
G: We first heard about this 6 years ago.
W: Gotcha. And how long ago was it shut down?
G: Two years ago. Yeah, that’s two years ago. Now he’s in court.
W: Gotcha. So it’ll probably be a while until he gets a sentence, right?
G: Yes, I hope the judicial system can punish all the CCP spies in the US.
W: As far as the police station, was it operating just in New York or would they be all over the place?
G: No, no, no. Before, some report exposed some in Europe. I believe in the US – you know, in California, in Chicago, in Washington, DC, the big cities in the US – I believe the CCP has a lot of secret police stations already. So I want to remind our listeners, if you find someone who works for CCP in the US, we should report to FBI and stop the CCP.
Narration: And if you’d like to learn more about Chinese secret police stations in Europe and the US, the Center for Human Rights has published a detailed analysis of the situation. To read this report, go to our research and analysis page on humanrights.catholic.edu.
W: And then Guangcheng, there’s another story that’s been going around about a mayor.
G: Yes, yes, that comes from Arcadia City, California. Her name is Eileen Wang, right? She came from Sichuan Province and Chengdu City, and she immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Yeah, she’s lived in the US 31 years. So yeah, the problem is she works with her boyfriend. His name is Sun Yaoning, last name Sun, first name Yaoning. They work together in California to help CCP.
W: So what would they do?
G: They created a media station, US News Center.
W: Was it like a website or TV?
G: Yeah, it’s a website.
W: Okay, website. Gotcha.
G: Yeah. And the CCP would write propaganda articles and give the article to them. And then she published on US News Center. And then she [would] send the link back to mainland China to [the] CCP’s propaganda office and told them, “I did this.” And we can see, you know, the CCP’s official said, “Oh, you did a good job.”
She said, “Oh, thank you, Leader.” The US officials, she listened to the CCP and called CCP officials, “You are my leaders.”
W: Guangcheng, how long was she doing this for?
G: The media [center], since 2020, six years ago. Yeah. And her boyfriend, Sun Yawning, he never registered as a foreign agent. Even though he is working with the CCP. And last year, the judicial system sentenced him to prison for 4 years.
W: Going back to the mayor, how was she caught? Did somebody report her website, or what happened? How did people…?
G: Yeah, some netizens reported her and they have CCP to do the psychological warfare and they try to influence the different leaders in California. We can see she took a picture with [the] judiciary president in California. And you know, California’s judiciary system’s leader, his name is Robert Conta. Robert Conta’s wife, Leah Conta, is a congresswoman.
And they pushed some law to support LGBTQ in California. And They were trying to use the LGBT protection law to also protect the exposure of Chinese agents.
W: Gotcha.
G: So I believe in the US, [it’s] not just Eileen Wang, right? A lot of people there, you know, in that small city, more than 60% the people come from mainland China. So the influence is very deep. Another spy, his name is Chen Jun. Six years ago, when some protests happened in California, Chen Jun went to the square to threaten the activists there.
W: It was an anti-CCP protest?
G: Yeah, he said, “You know, if I report your picture and your name to Beijing, your family in mainland China will get in trouble.” And later, you know, three years ago, the FBI arrested him and sentenced him to prison. But he said, “Our spy system is much stronger than [the] FBI.”
Chen Jun was in prison. He still thinks they are stronger than FBI. He still thinks they will win.
W: So Guangcheng, if a listener, for example, suspects somebody of being a spy or working with the Communist Party – which does happen; there was a student we interviewed, we’ll put her podcast in the description. I mean, she was a student who was recruited to do some spy work, basically for the CCP.
What should somebody do if they suspect somebody is a CCP agent?
G: Yeah, I think everybody, at least all the US people, if you find someone very strange, if you find they work for [the] CCP, if somebody supports CCP always, you should report them.
W: Guangcheng, where should they report them to?
G: You can write a letter to Congress building, you can call them, and you can report to [the] FBI, and you can report to the State Department. Yeah, different ways you can do [it].
W: Yeah, well, I’m sure unfortunately there’ll be many of these stories to come that we’ll cover on this podcast, and we have covered so many, and you can find them on our website at humanrights.catholic.edu. But Guangcheng, thank you very much for the updates on these particular cases.
G: Thank you, Will. Thank you, everyone.
The 2026 Human Rights Essay Contest is open to students of all ages and offers $4,000 in prize money. The focus for this contest is on the sentencing of human rights activist Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison and how this sentencing should impact US-China relations. Essays must be submitted by June 15th.
For more information, visit humanrights.catholic.edu.