California Family’s Millions in Political Donations Draw New Scrutiny Over Alleged China Ties
New scrutiny has fallen on a wealthy California family whose political giving has benefited some of the state’s most powerful Democrats, after newly released FBI files and Chinese-language government reports connected relatives to a suspected Chinese spy and to outreach efforts by Beijing’s overseas influence machinery.
The Yin family, which amassed its fortune running McDonald’s franchises in California, has contributed more than $4.4 million to political causes and candidates, including Governor Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and other leading figures in the state. But the family’s alleged past associations with Fang Fang, also known as Christine Fang, and reported interactions with Chinese government officials have thrust them into an ongoing national debate about foreign influence in American politics.
Family patriarch Chei Chen Yin, known widely as C.C. Yin, is an 89-year-old Northern California philanthropist whose rags-to-riches story has been celebrated for decades. He arrived in the United States from China in the 1960s with only $100, according to published accounts, and eventually built a successful franchise empire. Along with his brother Henry Yin, he founded and ran an organization called Asian Pacific American Public Affairs, or APAPA, which describes itself as a civic engagement group that helps young people and community members develop leadership skills, understand government, vote and participate in democracy.
“When this country gives us opportunity, we have a responsibility to give back,” C.C. Yin told CBS News.
The family’s giving has been substantial. State and federal campaign records show the Yins have donated nearly $3 million to California-level political causes and another $1,455,027 to federal campaigns, both directly and through C.C. Yin’s McDonald’s franchise business. Among the beneficiaries were Newsom, whose past campaigns received $364,817, plus $80,000 for his 2019 inauguration committee and $50,000 to a nonprofit at the governor’s direction.
The family also gave $221,700 to campaigns of California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis between 2018 and 2025, $214,300 to Kamala Harris’s campaigns between 2019 and 2024, and $115,680 to former state Treasurer John Chiang’s campaigns, according to state records.
The Fang Fang Connection
The renewed attention on the Yins stems in part from FBI files declassified by the White House in August. Those files describe C.C. Yin as a one-time professional associate of Fang Fang, the suspected Chinese spy who became the center of a scandal involving disgraced former California congressman Eric Swalwell. Fang had a sexual relationship with Swalwell before fleeing to China in 2015.
The FBI files include Swalwell’s interviews with investigators in 2015 and 2016. In those interviews, Swalwell identified Fang as his “point of contact” for APAPA. He said a top APAPA official directed him to Fang. The official’s name is redacted in the report, but two sources familiar with the file’s contents told CBS News that the official was C.C. Yin.
Fang also appeared alongside C.C. Yin and Henry Yin at a 15-person APAPA event, according to a photo posted on Facebook in 2013 by a City of Cupertino official. The image shows the group together at a gathering that appears to have been organized under the APAPA banner.
APAPA president Kris Concepcion said current leadership was not aware that Fang Fang ever held an official role with the national organization. “Our understanding is that she was associated with a local chapter that is no longer operational,” he said. “Like hundreds, or even thousands, of other community members who attend public events, being photographed with APAPA members does not mean she was an officer, board member, employee or representative of APAPA.”
No evidence has emerged that either C.C. Yin or Henry Yin knew about Fang’s alleged espionage activities during her time with APAPA.
Meetings With Chinese Government Officials
The scrutiny has also extended to Henry Yin, who previously served as national board chair of APAPA and remains a board member. National security experts who study Chinese influence operations have documented alleged interactions between Henry Yin and the United Front, the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas influence wing.
Jacqueline Deal, a board member of State Armor, a company that helps lawmakers detect foreign influence operations, said the Chinese government has a “broad-reaching, coordinated strategy for dominance that relies on shaping U.S. policy so that over time we get weaker and China gets stronger.” She said she suspects political donations are being used to help “disincentivize these leaders from noticing Chinese Communist Party political interference.” There is no evidence the Yins have been co-opted in this way.
Deal said she found a string of Chinese media reports documenting Henry Yin’s attendance at ten events in China hosted by Chinese government officials and United Front representatives since 2013. The United Front published Chinese-language write-ups of Henry Yin’s reported meetings in 2015 and 2023.
One article said Henry Yin traveled to Baoshan in Yunnan province in June 2015 and held talks with the Municipal Party Committee United Front Work Department, reaching “a consensus on further strengthening contacts.” It described Yin as their “designated contact person for California–China economic, trade, scientific and technological interaction.”
Another 2013 article by a Chinese government office described a meeting between Yin and a Chinese government official in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. The article said Yin had been offered a position there with the title “Overseas Talent Recruitment Adviser for Sichuan Province.” There is no evidence Yin accepted the offer, which was made during a friendlier period in U.S.-China relations.
A United Front statement from 2023 said a delegation of “Chinese Entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley,” including Henry Yin, visited his hometown of Chengdu and “built a new bridge for investment cooperation between Chengdu and Silicon Valley.”
Henry Yin did not respond to requests for comment. He has previously described his efforts as “networking.” In 2016, while serving on the California Commission for Economic Development, he told the East Bay Times that his goal was to further business relations between China and the United States as part of his decades as a trans-national entrepreneur. “I’ve done a lot of networking, and these days I’m glad to see these networks deliver results,” he told the newspaper.
Neither Henry Yin nor C.C. Yin has been accused by U.S. law enforcement of working as a foreign agent or acting against American interests.
Experts Weigh In
Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow June Teufel Dreyer, a professor at the University of Miami, said the patterns of political donations and advisory roles are among the tools used by the United Front. But she cautioned that actions such as traveling to China for diplomacy and business trips could be entirely innocent.
“There’s really nothing wrong with successful Chinese entrepreneurs wanting to help out the economies of the country they originally came from,” Dreyer said. But she added: “We should get rid of the idea that there’s such a thing as a truly private business in China. They are all controlled at some level by the government.”
Cheryl Yu, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a foreign affairs think tank, said the Chinese government attempts to exert influence on well-connected Americans regardless of those individuals’ intentions. “This is how the United Front works. They build these friendly, long-term relationships, then at some point they make requests,” she said.
APAPA’s Concepcion pushed back against the implication that the organization itself has ties to Beijing. He said APAPA has “no relationship with the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party, or the United Front,” and that “personal travel, relationships, employment histories, and views” of members “should not be attributed to APAPA.”
Access to Top Politicians
The Yins’ connections have at times placed them at the intersection of Chinese diplomacy and American politics. C.C. Yin was credited with helping arrange Newsom’s 2023 trip to China, according to a story co-authored by his organization in the New York-based Taiwanese newspaper World Journal. The article said C.C. Yin began negotiating the visit “after being entrusted by the governor’s office” to formally convey Newsom’s desire to visit China to Consul General Zhang Jianmin.
Henry Yin accompanied the governor as an adviser on that October 2023 trip, where Newsom met Chinese President Xi Jinping. Henry Yin has also been photographed with Newsom at APAPA events and shared the images on Facebook, including a September 2019 fundraising dinner at Yin Ranch.
Newsom’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. The governor is among those expected to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
Henry Yin also acted as an adviser to California congressman Ro Khanna, who is likewise talked about as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028 and currently serves as the ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. The committee was established to monitor Chinese government influence in U.S. politics. The Yin brothers have personally donated $15,800 to Khanna’s congressional campaigns since 2017.
Khanna’s public social media posts have described a much closer relationship with Henry Yin than his office now acknowledges. In a 2019 Facebook post, Khanna included a photo of Henry Yin presenting him with a birthday cake, with a caption announcing that “Henry will serve as my Senior Advisor on Foreign Trade and Economic Development.” In a 2020 post, Khanna referred to Henry Yin as a “good friend.”
Until this month, Yin listed on his LinkedIn page a current role as “Sr. Advisor to US House of Rep [Ro] Khanna,” beginning in 2019. The page has since been deleted.
Khanna also appeared alongside Henry Yin in February of this year at a Sunnyvale, California event run by Asian Americans for Good Government, an APAPA-affiliated political action committee. Both Henry Yin and C.C. Yin have been listed as board members of that PAC, according to archived versions of its website.
Earlier this month, Khanna’s spokesperson told the New York Post that Henry Yin “has never held a formal role with the Congressman.” In a subsequent statement to CBS News, Khanna’s communications director, Sarah Drory, said Henry Yin “served for a year as one of dozens of volunteer leaders.” Drory added that “APAPA has been a decades-long organization to empower Asian Americans and it’s an ugly anti-Asian smear to suggest ties” to the Chinese government.
C.C. Yin, for his part, defended his record and his love for the United States. “I love America, and I strongly condemn any effort by any foreign government to interfere in American politics or undermine our democracy,” he told CBS News.
The full extent of the Yins’ activities abroad and their relationships with American politicians remains the subject of intense interest. For now, no U.S. law enforcement agency has accused either brother of wrongdoing. But the revelations have fueled a broader conversation about how wealthy individuals with connections to foreign governments gain access to American power through campaign donations, advisory roles and personal relationships.
