These are two legal cases that are thousands of miles apart. But they have one thing in common: They could well increase the pressure on Beijing. And poison China’s already tense relations with the United States and the Philippines.
In the past 24 hours, two women of Chinese origin and involved in local politics have been arrested on charges of spying for Beijing. The first, Linda Sun, was an aide to the last two governors of New York. The second, Alice Guo, a former mayor of a city north of Manila in the Philippines, was arrested in Indonesia after a months-long search.
In New York, Linda Sun favored Beijing’s emissaries
In the midst of the American presidential campaign and while relations between Washington and Beijing are far from being appeased, it is undoubtedly the arrest of Linda Sun that is attracting the most attention. And for good reason: aged 41, born in China and naturalized American, she worked closely for nearly 15 years with the last two Democratic governors of the State of New York. She was Andrew Cuomo’s head of diversity issues (2011-2021) and then deputy chief of staff to the current governor, Kathy Hochul, until her dismissal in March 2023, for “inappropriate conduct”.
She is now accused of acting as an agent of Beijing in her capacity. Linda Sun “used her position of influence” among New York executives to “covertly advance” the interests of the Chinese regime, “directly threatening our country’s national security,” prosecutors said in a statement.
She allegedly repeatedly prevented Taiwanese officials from meeting with New York state officials and, at the same time, favored emissaries from Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party. She “repeatedly violated internal rules and protocols within the Governor’s Office to provide them with improper advantages,” prosecutors further explain. In particular, she allegedly provided them with “unauthorized invitation letters from the Governor’s Office that were used to facilitate travel by PRC government officials to the United States for meetings with government officials” (from New York, editor’s note).
Villas, luxury cars and salted ducks
In exchange for these services, Beijing is said to have generously rewarded Linda Sun by helping her husband, who is also of Chinese origin and a naturalized American. He is said to have obtained funding from the authorities that greatly facilitated his business in China and the United States. Funding that allowed the couple to lead a lavish lifestyle and buy, without having to borrow, an apartment worth $2.1 million in Hawaii; a $4.1 million house on Long Island and several luxury cars including a 2024 Ferrari Roma costing nearly $250,000.
But also to benefit, according to prosecutors, from benefits in kind such as, for example, the delivery to the home of Linda Sun’s parents, and on several occasions of a dish of salted duck from Nanjing specially prepared by the personal chef of a high official of the Chinese government who would be none other than the Consul General of China in New York. The two spouses pleaded not guilty and were released on bail (to the tune of 1.5 million dollars for Linda Sun and 500,000 dollars for her husband). A freedom granted on condition not to enter into contact with a Chinese diplomatic mission.
Alice Guo suspected of links to Chinese organized crime in the Philippines
Several thousand kilometers away, in Indonesia, another arrest risks embarrassing Beijing: that of Alice Guo, former mayor of the city of Bamban, north of Manila. The 34-year-old woman was arrested Tuesday evening and is accused by the country’s authorities of being, among other things, a Chinese spy. Again in a context of growing tensions between the Philippines and China.
However, it was not this last suspicion that led to Alice Guo’s escape and arrest. But the fact that she is accused of corruption, money laundering and human trafficking and probable collusion with Chinese criminal organizations. An accusation linked to the links she would have with online gaming companies managed by Chinese nationals and operating illegally in the city she ran.
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It was during a Senate investigation into these Pogos (the name given in the Philippines to these illegal casinos whose customers are mainly in mainland China where gambling is prohibited) that suspicions of espionage for Beijing emerged. And were reinforced when Alice Guo did not show up for subsequent summons and left the country clandestinely for Indonesia via Singapore and Malaysia.
Illegal entry into the Philippines
During the Senate hearing, the answers about her origin were considered evasive. And it turned out that Alice Guo may have obtained Philippine citizenship fraudulently. Born to a father of Chinese origin and a Filipino mother, she may have in fact entered the country illegally. All of these factors normally prohibit her from being an elected official in the Philippines.
These gray areas in her career have led several Filipino senators to see her as a Chinese agent trained to infiltrate and influence the government. The senators point out other oddities in Alice Guo’s career, including the fact that she won the Bamban mayoral election by only 500 votes over her rival, even though it was her first election campaign and she was virtually unknown in the region.
A suspicion that has reached the top of the state… “I know all the politicians in Tarlac (the province where Alice Guo says she spent her childhood, Editor’s note), no one knows her,” Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared in the media this summer. Adding, “so, we wonder where she comes from? We don’t know. That’s why an investigation is really necessary.”