SAIPAN — Guam Delegate James Moylan told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the Chinese Communist Party has infiltrated local governments across the United States, recounting his own experience as a Guam senator and pointing to a fresh California guilty plea as he pressed an amendment to counter foreign influence on non-federal governments.
“My colleagues in Senate back in Guam received calls from the CCP agents telling us to kind of lay back,” Moylan said. “It was amazing, but that’s what they do.”
Moylan said aligned influence in local governments has the potential to harm the nation from within, and cited the case of Eileen Wang, the former mayor of Arcadia, California. Wang, 58, pleaded guilty May 29 to one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government, a felony carrying up to 10 years in prison, after prosecutors said she and an associate followed instructions from Chinese government officials to post pro-Beijing articles on a website aimed at the Chinese American community. She resigned as mayor and from the Arcadia City Council after federal prosecutors announced the charge.
Moylan also pointed to a New York Times investigation published last year reporting on how the People’s Republic of China helped unseat a state senator, got involved in city politics and has been quietly growing its influence at the local level.
His amendment directs the Secretary of State, working with the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, to develop a strategy to eliminate the ability of foreign adversaries to influence, pressure or threaten non-federal governments. It calls for identifying what adversaries are targeting, how they exert malign influence and how the federal government and private sector currently identify bad actors, along with recommendations to improve that approach.
“My amendment offers a solution to what is clearly a growing problem,” Moylan said.
Moylan advanced a similar measure during the committee’s September 2025 markup of the State Department reauthorization package, a Strategy to Prevent Foreign Influence on Non-Federal Governments directing the State Department to develop protections for state, local, tribal and territorial governments including Guam.