The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t believe its police state should end at China’s borders. Beijing believes its power to surveil, intimidate and control its enemies follows them wherever they go. Including right here to California.

The latest example, it appears, was living in Irvine.

Wanying “Heather” Zhang, a 34-year-old realtor, was arrested by the FBI Saturday at Los Angeles International Airport as she prepared to leave for China. Federal prosecutors accuse her of acting as an unregistered agent of the People’s Republic of China.

According to an FBI affidavit, Zhang traveled to Seattle last year at the direction of Chinese government officials to surveil a close relative of a Taiwanese government official. She allegedly sent her handlers photographs, videos and license-plate information.

First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli said Zhang coordinated the operation with an associate and “used tradecraft to avoid detection.”

“We just arrested a Chinese foreign agent at LAX attempting to depart for China,” Essayli announced Saturday.

Zhang has not been convicted, and the allegations against her will have to be proven in court. But there is nothing mysterious about the intentions of the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing has spent years pushing its intelligence, influence and coercion operations far beyond China’s borders.

And California keeps turning up in the case files.

There was the case of suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang (“Fang Fang”), whose relationship with disgraced former California Rep. Eric Swalwell became a major scandal.

And earlier this year, Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills was sentenced to four years in federal prison after pleading guilty to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government.

Sun wasn’t stealing missile plans or hacking Pentagon computers. He was operating inside American politics.

Federal prosecutors say Sun served as a campaign adviser to a Southern California city council candidate, then worked with Chinese officials to expand Beijing’s influence in the United States.

More ominously, Sun closely surveilled then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen during her 2023 visit to Southern California, providing a Chinese consular official with real-time information about her movements.

Consider what that means. An agent of Communist China was tracking the president of Taiwan in Southern California and reporting her movements to a PRC official.

Now federal prosecutors allege another Southern California resident took direction from Chinese officials to surveil a Taiwanese official’s relative.

Different target. Same disturbing pattern.

And Beijing’s operations go well beyond surveillance.

Eileen Wang was serving as mayor of Arcadia when federal authorities revealed that she had agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government. She formally pleaded guilty in May and is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday.

Her admitted work for Beijing occurred before she was elected.

According to the Justice Department, Wang and Sun operated a purported Chinese-American news outlet that published material at the direction of Chinese government officials. That included propaganda denying genocide and forced labor in Xinjiang.

After Wang reported that one Beijing-directed article had attracted more than 15,000 views, a Chinese official responded, “Great!”

Wang replied: “Thank you leader.”

She later went on to become mayor of an American city.

Other federal cases involving Southern California have included a Los Angeles man sent to prison for participating in what the Justice Department called China’s “transnational repression campaign” against Falun Gong practitioners, and an alleged operation to surveil and harass a Los Angeles-based critic of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.

Surveillance. Political influence. Propaganda. Transnational repression.

This is how Beijing operates. And increasingly, it is doing it here.

Essayli put it plainly when Wang’s plea agreement was announced: It was another victory in the effort to defend America “against China’s efforts to corrupt our institutions.”

Exactly.

And let’s be clear about who the adversary is. It isn’t Chinese Americans or the Chinese people. Some of the people with the most to fear from these operations are Chinese dissidents, Taiwanese Americans and others who came to this country precisely because America offers freedoms the Chinese Communist Party denies.

Once they are here, Beijing has no claim on them.

The Chinese Communist Party censors its people, surveils political opponents and runs a vast police state inside China. That is the ugly reality of communist rule.

But California is not China.

The people who live here answer to US law, not Beijing. Taiwan’s leaders and their families are not legitimate surveillance targets on American soil. Neither are Chinese dissidents or anyone else the Communist Party decides is an enemy.

Bill Essayli and the FBI are sending exactly the right message.

Beijing’s authority ends at our border.

We should make damn sure it stays there.

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com

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