Three years before California real estate agent Wanying “Heather” Zhang was arrested as suspected Chinese agentshe showed up in San Francisco to celebrate President Xi Jinping’s visit.
Zhang was photographed in 2023 wearing a red cap and walking down the street alongside the head of a Chinese-American organization with deep ties to the foreign influence arm of the Beijing government.
Shortly after the photo was taken, pro-China activists began attacking protesters of Xi’s authoritarian rule – although there is no evidence that Zhang was involved in any attacks.
Orange County mother, 34, now faces federal prosecution for allegedly surveilling the Taiwanese president’s son in Washington last year at the direction of Chinese government officials.
FBI 
The FBI said it obtained his text messages with Chinese intelligence officials, plotting and carrying out a plan to secretly film Taiwan’s first son, Lai Ting-yu, and his family in the Seattle suburb where they live.
Investigators even claim to have footage from a neighbor’s security camera capturing Zhang in the middle of his surveillance mission.
A CBS News investigation finds the alleged agent’s story bears striking similarities to the infamous suspected Chinese spy Fang “Christine” Fang, who had an intimate relationship with disgraced congressman Eric Swalwell before fleeing to China in 2015 amid an FBI espionage investigation.
Like Fang, Zhang attended Beijing International Relations University, run by China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s intelligence agency and secret police.
In a criminal complaint filed in a Los Angeles court, FBI Counterintelligence Special Agent Kevin Holt wrote that the department is “recruiting heavily” at the university.
After moving to the United States, Zhang studied at the University of Southern California and received his real estate license in 2016.
She built her business as a real estate agent at Irvine-based JC Pacific Corp. over the next decade, listing more than 130 properties, according to Zillow, with prices ranging from hundreds of thousands to more than $8 million.
Zhang and her husband, a fellow real estate agent at JC Pacific, purchased their six-bedroom, 6,030-square-foot home for $5.65 million in 2024, records show. They sold the property in June for $6 million.
Her Instagram page shows photos of Zhang wearing designer clothes, dining at expensive restaurants, taking trips to the United States and Canada and shopping at luxury stores with a friend in Paris last year.
Similar to Fang, she became involved in advocacy groups and events for Chinese Americans.
In 2022, she participated in an “entrepreneurship competition” for Chinese students with Chinese government consulate officials, and was honored at an event for “young Chinese elites in the United States” the same year where she received the “young entrepreneur” award.
Her involvement in the All American Chinese Association brought her into contact with officials with deep ties to the Chinese government.
AACA leader Cai Chenghua was vice chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, a U.S. group so close to the Beijing government that it had to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as an influential arm of the Chinese Communist Party.
In 2022, Cai helped organize a Chinese National Day celebration in which Los Angeles Consul General Zhang Ping urged Chinese Americans to oppose “Taiwan independence” and support the “complete reunification” of China.
The AACA bused pro-China supporters to San Francisco for President Xi’s visit in November 2023. Zhang was photographed alongside Cai, wearing matching red caps behind an AACA banner.
AACA board member Tian Jun is also a committee member of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, which became part of the Chinese government’s United Front in 2018, according to a study by Michael Lucci, a security consultant who helps protect U.S. institutions from Chinese influence through his company State Armor.
Cai was photographed at several events with former Arcadia, Calif., mayor Eileen Wang, who pleaded guilty to acting as an agent of the Chinese government in May.
“U.S.-based groups linked to the United Front of the Communist Party through their key personnel continue to appear in federal foreign agent cases,” State Armor counsel Jacqueline Deal told CBS News. “This is not a coincidence. The mission of these organizations is to help the Party and harm the United States.”
At a minimum, Deal said agents of these groups should be required to register with the U.S. Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It is federal law that Zhang allegedly violated by acting as a Chinese agent without registering as required.
Cai has not been accused of any wrongdoing or charged with any crime. He did not respond to a request for comment.
According to prosecutors, by 2025, Zhang had fully assumed the role of an agent of the Chinese government.
She traveled to China in January of that year and met with a government official and a fellow graduate of the University of International Relations, according to the FBI affidavit.
Two months later, the two men sent a text message on the Chinese messaging app WeChat about the address of a Taiwanese official who had spoken out against the Chinese government, according to records obtained through a search warrant on Zhang’s iCloud account, the FBI agent wrote.
She reportedly visited China again in June and met with a second Chinese official in the private room of a restaurant, where investigators believe she was assigned to monitor the son of Taiwan’s president.
She then texted her supposed government official: “I can take care of this thing.”
After recording video of Lai and her family, she returned to Los Angeles without incident, according to the complaint. She was arrested as he attempted to board a flight to Shanghai on Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport.
US Department of Justice 
She appeared in court Monday, dressed in the same designer workout gear she was wearing when she was arrested.
His family declined to comment.
“The complaint in this case exposes a brazen plot led by the Chinese government to conduct a covert surveillance mission on U.S. soil targeting the close relatives of a Taiwanese government official,” Roman Rozhavsky, deputy director of the FBI’s Intelligence and Counterintelligence Division, said in a statement released Monday.
“The arrest of Wanying Zhang, accused of acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government, clearly demonstrates the lengths to which China’s authoritarian regime will go to advance its goals,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Taiwanese president told CBS News he condemned “such brutal acts of repression, intimidation and even attacks on the freedom and democracy of people or their families, which are unacceptable in the civilized world.”
“We thank the US judicial agency for its assistance and protection to our people,” the spokesperson said. “Taiwan will continue to cooperate with all its democratic allies to jointly combat illegal acts of cross-border repression.”
China’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to CBS News’ request for comment. A spokesperson told NBC News: “China has always opposed exaggerated accusations of ‘Chinese espionage’ that slander and defame the country.
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