What is it with California Democrats and Chinese spies? Inquiring minds want to know.
Ro Khanna is the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party — the panel created specifically to police Beijing’s efforts to influence American politics, business, and technology. So it’s worth asking why, when the New York Post came calling last week, his office was suddenly so eager to shrink a title he once announced with a birthday photo op.
Here’s the tangle. In 2019, Khanna publicly named Henry Yin his “Senior Advisor on Foreign Trade and Economic Development,” posing with him and other community members to make it official. Yin’s LinkedIn still lists the role. An APAPA press release states he served as senior adviser to Khanna and led the group’s U.S.-China Trade Committee. This was not a quiet association. Khanna advertised it.
The problem is what a Post investigation says about Yin and the organization behind him. APAPA — the Asian Pacific American Public Affairs group — is the same civic outfit that alleged Chinese operative Fang Fang used to work her way into California political circles, including volunteering on Khanna’s own 2014 campaign. Fang, you’ll recall, is the suspected spy who cultivated a documented sexual relationship with former Rep. Eric Swalwell and managed to place an intern in his Washington office before the FBI moved in. The Post reports APAPA is still placing interns in political offices across the country.
Yin himself, according to the reporting, carries United Front associations and a decade-long record of China travel — leading a “Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Delegation” from 2013 to 2023, delivering remarks on the perspective of overseas Chinese in the U.S., with the coverage amplified in CCP-controlled provincial media that hailed him as an “overseas Chinese leader.” A 2018 congressional commission described United Front work as Beijing’s system for co-opting and neutralizing potential opposition, particularly within overseas Chinese communities. That is precisely the activity Khanna’s committee exists to scrutinize.
Two caveats are owed, and I’ll state them plainly. Yin has not been accused of any crime, and APAPA’s leaders say they have no record that Fang held any official post and that members’ personal views don’t reflect an organizational position. Fair enough. This is about associations and judgment, not proven espionage.
But judgment is the entire job here. After the Post asked about the relationship, Khanna’s spokeswoman claimed Yin “has never held a formal role with the Congressman” — a statement that sits awkwardly next to the congressman’s own 2019 announcement, Yin’s LinkedIn, and APAPA’s press release, all saying otherwise. When the paperwork you generated contradicts your damage control, the damage control is the tell.
None of this makes Khanna a Chinese agent, and no one serious is claiming it does. What it does raise is a fair question about the man Democrats chose to lead their side of the CCP committee: he spent years elevating a figure with documented United Front ties as his trade hand, and now that it’s inconvenient, he can’t quite remember doing it.
