She stood there, official seal of the California Treasurer's office and everything, and personally handed an award to a man whose organization the U.S. government says exists to "malignly influence" American leaders for Beijing. Not once. At least ten times since 2018, by the count of a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation. To Communist Party members. To Chinese intelligence-linked operatives. Commendations. On behalf of you, the taxpayer of California.

And now she's the Democratic frontrunner to be the state's next lieutenant governor. Promotion! That's how it works in Sacramento — you spend a couple of decades getting cozy with the United Front Work Department, and the reward is a bigger office and a shot at running the place. Her name is Fiona Ma. She's been California's treasurer for two terms, which means she's the chief financial officer of the largest state economy in the country — fifth-largest in the world if it were its own nation. And according to translations of Chinese government and state media reports, she has met with officials from the CCP and the UFWD — Beijing's blend of "engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations," per the House Select Committee on the CCP — at least 30 times since 1999.

Thirty times. Over more than two decades. With the espionage wing of a hostile foreign government. If you or I had a single meeting like that, we'd be explaining ourselves to a guy in a windowless room with a tape recorder. Ma got a campaign slogan out of it.

Here's how she described the relationship in a 2023 sit-down with CGTN — that's Chinese state-run media, the propaganda arm, the network Beijing uses to talk to the world. "We really should be more integrated," Ma said. "The more that we can get along, work together, I think would create more peace in the world as well as better economic opportunities for both countries."

More integrated. With the regime that runs Uyghur labor camps, threatens to invade Taiwan, and floods our streets with fentanyl precursors. She's not wrong that it'd create economic opportunities — apparently for her. Donors with ties to the CCP and its intelligence arms have funneled more than $100,000 into her political war chest, the DCNF found.

Let's talk about one of those donors, because she's a doozy.

In September 2022, Ma's campaign accepted $2,500 from a woman named Eileen Wang, then a mayoral candidate in Arcadia, California. One month earlier, Ma had endorsed her. Sweet, right? Two public servants, supporting each other. Except the Department of Justice says Eileen Wang is expected to plead guilty in the coming weeks to acting as an illegal agent of China.

An illegal agent of China. Cutting checks to the woman who wants to be California's second-in-command. And Ma was photographed standing next to her at multiple events, smiling for the cameras, because of course she was.

Then there's Simon Pang — co-founder of Royal Business Bank, $12,500 to Ma since 2018, and, in his spare time, the "Southern California coordinator" for a UFWD affiliate the National Counterintelligence and Security Center says works to "directly and malignly influence state and local leaders." And Xuan Guojun, who held positions in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region People's Congress — yes, that Xinjiang — whose California nonprofit kicked $2,750 to Ma's 2022 campaign. That nonprofit is a 501(c)(3), which the IRS specifically bars from making political contributions. It's co-chaired by a supervisor for the Ministry of Public Security, which is what China calls its FBI. Ma attended several of their events.

This is the part where the defenders show up to explain that it's all just innocent multicultural outreach. Community groups! Friendship associations! Cultural exchange! Sam Cooper, who literally wrote the book on this — "Wilful Blindness," about how CCP networks infiltrated the West — explained the playbook to the DCNF: Beijing "floods the zone" with United Front community groups "to entangle American politicians in meetings, under the guise of legitimate community outreach and multiculturalism."

So let's follow that "innocent outreach" logic to where it actually goes. It's just a friendship association — so you take the meeting. It's just a cultural festival — so you show up. It's just a community leader — so you hand him an award. It's just a campaign donation from a nice lady running for mayor — so you cash it. And one day you look up and you're the chief financial officer of California with a thirty-meeting relationship with a foreign spy agency and a guilty-plea-pending illegal agent's money in your account, and you're insisting it was all about the dumplings.

And every time Beijing actually wanted something concrete from her, the record shows she delivered. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that in 2005, while on the Board of Supervisors, she withdrew support for a Falun Gong art exhibit after Chinese government pressure. The Sacramento Bee reported that in 2009, as a state assemblywoman, she killed a resolution honoring Tibet after intense Chinese lobbying. Funny how the "cultural friendship" only ever flows one direction.

You want to know how upside-down this is? A guy who runs a hardware store in Bakersfield gets audited if he deducts a truck. A small businesswoman in Fresno fills out three forms to hire one employee. But the woman who's been the official guardian of California's checkbook can rack up two dozen meetings with Chinese intelligence officials since taking that job, pin medals on Beijing's influence operatives, and the only consequence is that she's polling first for a promotion. That's not a glitch. That's the system telling you exactly who it answers to.

Peter Schweizer, who wrote "Red Handed" on precisely this phenomenon, didn't mince it for the DCNF: "CCP elite capture is alive and well. Any politician who continues to engage in these types of behavior is not a target, but is complicit in CCP activities. Ignorance is no longer an excuse." Complicit. Not naïve. Not a victim of clever spies. Complicit.

We've watched this movie before, and it never ends with the credits rolling on a stronger America. Beijing didn't buy up Hollywood, our universities, and half the NBA in a single afternoon. They did it the way Ma's record reads — one friendly meeting, one cultural award, one "we should be more integrated," one quietly killed Tibet resolution at a time. The strategy isn't a smash-and-grab. It's a slow lean, and they're patient, because they've watched our political class trade national security for ribbon-cuttings for thirty years and pay zero price for it.

Now play it forward. If a state treasurer can do all this and the reward is a clear path to lieutenant governor — and in California, the lieutenant governor is one heartbeat or one resignation from running the state, and a launchpad to the governor's mansion and beyond — then the lesson every ambitious Sacramento Democrat just learned is that the United Front isn't a liability. It's a fundraising network. Watch how many of them suddenly discover a passion for "cultural friendship" before the next cycle. The donors are already in the Rolodex. The trophies are already engraved.

And if it can happen in Sacramento, it can happen in your statehouse. Beijing is not running this play on Fiona Ma because she's special. They're running it because it works, and because nobody who matters has decided to make it stop. Schweizer is right: ignorance was the old excuse. We're past that now. The reports are public. The translations are done. The guilty plea is coming. There's no "I had no idea" left on the table.

So the only question is whether California voters hand the keys to the fifth-largest economy on earth to someone who spent twenty years answering Beijing's phone calls — or whether somebody, somewhere, finally remembers that "complicit" was a word an actual investigative reporter used, on the record, before the election. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. Neither is the ballot box.