The reported expulsion comes 24 hours after a high-ranking official was charged with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, money laundering conspiracy, visa fraud, and alien smuggling.
New York: China’s Consul General in New York, Huang Ping, has been expelled, CNN reported this week, deepening the crisis swirling around New York governor Kathy Hochul's former aide who has been charged with acting as a secret agent for the Chinese government.
Hochul informed that the consul general had been expelled after she made a request. “I have conveyed my desire to have the counsel general from the People’s Republic of China and the New York mission expelled, and I’ve been informed that the counsel general is no longer in the New York mission,” said Hochul during a press conference.
However, reacting to the news, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told a regular briefing that Ping was not expelled and left his post as scheduled after completing his posting. The development comes after Linda Sun and her husband, Christopher Hu, were indicted on September 2 of being Chinese agents. Sun held a series of positions within the New York State government from 2012 to 2023 - including deputy chief of staff to Hochul for a year, beginning in September 2021.
According to court documents, Sun furthered Chinese interests during her tenure in the state government. She blocked representatives of the Taiwanese government from meeting with officials and attempted to arrange for a New York state official to visit China. Her husband is alleged to have received transactions worth millions for his business, and a relative promotion.
Sun's arrest was the latest in a crackdown on alleged Chinese agents, who include at least two political dissidents playing a double role in New York. Last month, Yuanjun Tang, who had been arrested during the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 and received political asylum in the US, was charged with providing information about dissidents to the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) while running a pro-democracy organization.
