Eileen Wang, the now-former mayor of Arcadia, a city in the Los Angeles area, has resigned from office after federal prosecutors revealed that she agreed to plead guilty to acting illegally as an agent of the Chinese government within the United States. Her departure from the mayor’s office comes shortly before a planned summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Department of Justice reported Monday that Wang, 58, operated a website called U.S. News Center between late 2020 and 2022, which was presented as a media outlet aimed at the local Chinese-American community. According to prosecutors, the site disseminated content favorable to the government of the People’s Republic of China and responded directly to instructions from Chinese officials.

The investigation alleges that Wang worked alongside Yaoning “Mike” Sun, a California resident who pleaded guilty in 2025 to acting as a foreign agent and is currently serving a four-year prison sentence.

According to the court agreement, Wang admitted that she never notified the U.S. Attorney General that she was acting on behalf of the Chinese government, as required by federal law. The documents also note that she and Sun “received and executed directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content on the website, and sometimes sought approval from PRC government officials to circulate other pro-PRC content.”

One of the incidents cited by the prosecution occurred in November 2021, when Wang was seeking to publish an article related to China and Russia. According to the case file, the then-official wrote: “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send.”

Authorities also noted that Wang helped republish an essay written by Chinese officials that denied allegations of genocide against the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region, one of the most sensitive issues in relations between China and the West.

The case sparked strong reactions within the U.S. government. John A. Eisenberg, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, wrote in a statement: “Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent.”

He added that “it is deeply concerning that someone who previously received and executed directives from PRC government officials is now in a position of public trust at all, but particularly so because that relationship with that foreign government had never been disclosed.”

For his part, Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, stated: “By her own admission, Eileen Wang secretly served the interests of the Chinese government.”

Wang was elected mayor of Arcadia in 2022. The city, located about 21 kilometers northeast of downtown Los Angeles, has a significant Asian-American population; nearly 59% of its residents identify as Asian, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. After the charges were made public, City Hall confirmed Wang’s immediate resignation and announced that the City Council will soon elect a new mayor.

The former official’s defense team insisted that the activities under investigation were not related to her public duties. Her attorneys, Brian A. Sun and Jason Liang, asserted that the case pertains exclusively to “her personal life,” specifically to the digital platform she operated alongside a person “she believed to be her fiancé.”

The charge of acting as an unregistered foreign agent carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison, although the plea agreement could reduce the final sentence. A federal judge will determine the final punishment in the coming weeks.

The case threatens to further fuel mistrust between the two countries and reinforce Washington’s concerns about potential political influence operations orchestrated by Beijing within U.S. territory, ahead of the meeting between Trump and Jinping.

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Mexican capital is changing hands and hence its destiny. As the largest wealth transfer in recent history gains momentum, younger heirs are diversifying and moving away from the industrial model that built their grandparents’ fortunes, instead directing their investments towards international markets. This silent but sustained shift occurs in parallel with the loss of confidence and the economic slowdown in the country, and threatens to accelerate the lack of productive domestic investment.

In Mexico, there is a dissonance between the weakening of the economy and the increase in wealth: while wealth is advancing at a double-digit rate, GDP is lagging behind. According to UBS bank, the average wealth per adult in the country has grown 150% since the 2008 financial crisis. And in 2025 alone, a year marked by the uncertainty generated by the trade war with the U.S., most Mexican business fortunes worth at least $400 million grew, led by those of Carlos Slim, 86, and Germán Larrea, 72, with a combined growth of 38%, according to the financial information service Infosel.

On the other hand, the GDP result at the end of the year was disappointing with growth of just 0.8%. Moreover, the first quarter of 2026 has seen a contraction of 0.8% triggered by austerity policies. Meanwhile, the flow of Mexican assets to destinations beyond its borders totaled around $25 billion last year, from direct investment and portfolios of bonds and shares, all of which combined to show sustained growth, according to the Bank of Mexico.

Firms such as the US-based BAI Capital are capitalizing on the growing interest of Mexican investors sinking their money into in other markets, offering schemes that combine real estate investment with access to permanent residence. “Capital is repositioning,” says Juan Carlos Eguiarte, general manager of the firm in Mexico. “This is not a theory, it is an active repositioning of global capital. Wealthy families in Latin America, and in Mexico, are making decisions right now. They are moving assets from unstable jurisdictions to markets with clearer rules,” he adds.

With offices in Mexico, Taiwan and soon China, the company is seeing investments moving to Texas, Florida and California as investors seek the protection of the dollar as a safe haven, access to a capital market with greater liquidity and, above all, legal certainty for its operations, amid the instability generated by the judicial reform in Mexico and the review of the USMCA in industrial plans. “They are also looking for something very important: succession planning, which is known as the Great Wealth Transfer phenomenon,” he says, referring to the hundreds of trillions of dollars that will be passed from the hands of baby boomers, who are approaching 80, to younger generations, such as Gen X, millennials and Gen Z.

This transfer is particularly relevant for Mexico due to the weight of family wealth in the economy, and it is this that is modifying investment preferences. Various studies estimate that about 90% of companies in Mexico are family-owned and that a relevant proportion of capital is still concentrated in the first or second generation. Younger millionaires are more open to global diversification and less conservative instruments, such as cryptocurrencies, real estate investment funds, tech-biased stocks, and baskets of assets such as ETFs (exchange-traded funds). According to a survey by investment firm Natixis, millennials are more inclined towards sustainable investments (32%) and nearly a quarter (24%) invest in cryptocurrencies.

Aversion to risk

This re-routing of resources, together with a sustained fall in gross fixed investment (GFI), which measures how much an economy invests in its productive capacity, together with the departure of buyers of Mexican debt, is taking its toll on the economy. Due to its closeness geographically to the U.S. and its commercial relationship with its neighbor, Mexico has managed to maintain its relative manufacturing advantage as the main supplier of goods to the world’s largest consumer. This has boosted its exports and foreign direct investment (FDI), which grew by 10.8% in 2025, becoming a lifeline regarding performance. However, the crumbling of infrastructure, security — both criminal and regulatory — and basic services has limited the expected nearshoring boom. In January 2026, the IFB showed an annual decline of 2.2%, a negative trend that has lasted 17 consecutive months, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).

“The fact that waves of capital are not entering reflects a great aversion to risk in the Mexican economy,” says Gabriela Siller, director of Economic Analysis at Grupo Financiero Base. The balance of the holding of government securities in the hands of residents abroad, such as bonds or Treasury certificates (Cetes), has stabilized at about 1.7 trillion pesos ($97.1 billion), after seven months of decline last year. However, Siller warns that the risk of capital flight persists in the face of greater global aversion due to the war in Iran and a deterioration in the perception of Mexico, associated with growing debt and tighter public spending. Siller adds that it is estimated that 70% of tax revenues are directed at social programs, the financial cost of the debt and contributory and non-contributory pensions.

“The Mexican economy has also fallen into a trap of stagnation, and this does not help,” Siller adds. Analysts’ forecasts suggest that Latin America’s second-largest economy will grow below 2% by the end of the year, reflecting a GDP with less capacity to absorb new capital and offer returns. “What any investor is looking for, even talking about fixed assets, is a good combination of risk and return. Faced with greater risk, obviously, they stop investing,” he says.

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