FIRST ON FOX: A previously unreported 2013 Facebook post by China’s San Francisco consulate shows then-freshman Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., touting “great potential” for U.S.-China cooperation during a meeting with a senior CCP diplomat, which came during the same time period when Swalwell was allegedly targeted by Chinese espionage efforts.

The 2013 photo, which was unearthed by Fox News Digital and “liked” by Christine “Fang Fang” Fang, a Chinese national who was suspected of being a Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) operative and who was reportedly working closely with Swalwell’s campaign helping with fundraising, showed Swalwell posing with Song Ru’an. 

At the time of the photo, Ru’an was the Deputy Consul General at China’s Bay Area consulate in San Francisco. He would subsequently be tapped to serve as the Deputy Commissioner of the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China in Hong Kong until at least 2021. 

“The United States and China have a lot in common and the two economies are highly complementary. There are great potential for the two countries to cooperate,” Swalwell said at the meeting according to the picture’s caption posted by the Chinese consulate. “I will work actively to promote bilateral economic and trade cooperation, and I’m looking forward to visiting China in the near future.”

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The unearthed photo comes a couple of weeks after Fox News Digital reported on a California-based law partner for a Beijing law firm donating thousands of dollars to Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign. Like Keliang “Clay” Zhu, Ru’an has a history of supporting interests contrary to American priorities. Ru’an served as one of China’s leading officials in Hong Kong between 2015 and 2021, and was a vocal critic of a 2019 U.S. Human Rights and Democracy Act aimed at protecting Hong Kongers from China’s authoritarian crackdown on its dissidents that only a single Republican member of Congress voted against. 

Ru’an blasted the bill at the time as the “the epitome of hegemony” and warned it went against American interests, according to the South China Morning Post. Ru’an also reportedly slammed the moves as a “negative and disgraceful role” the U.S. was playing in China’s domestic issues. 

Ru’an emerged as a central figure in Hong Kong during China’s national security crackdown there that began boiling over in 2020, 2021 and subsequent years. According to the Hong Kong Journalists Association, Ru’an told foreign media outlets to “inject positive energy” into coverage about new extradition laws China was imposing on Hong Kong in 2019. Multiple briefings from both previous and subsequent years showed similar efforts by Ru’an to “guide” media coverage in favor of China. 

In 2018, he met with members of the American media to discuss how the “One Country, Two Systems” framework between Hong Kong and China is vital to U.S.-China trade relations.

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Prior to Ru’an’s work on behalf of the Chinese government in Hong Kong, while serving as Deputy Consulate General at China’s San Francisco consulate, public reports said Ru’an and other consular officials sent letters and traveled to Oregon in an attempt to prevent the creation of a mural highlighting China’s human rights abuses against Tibetan people. Prior to working in San Francisco, Ru’an held multiple CCP roles back in China, including at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Swalwell’s team declined to provide any comment for this story. The San Francisco Chinese Consulate did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

“It’s bad enough that certain California special interests are pushing redistributionist tax policies straight out of a communist manifesto. Now one of the state’s leading gubernatorial candidates has been caught cozying up to the Communist Chinese Party again,” GOP strategist Colin Reed said. “California’s next governor needs to have the intelligence, judgment and character to stand up to the CCP, especially when it comes to empowering American innovators with a common sense regulatory environment that allows them to grow.”

“I know first hand what it’s like to live under a communist regime. One-party rule by an authoritarian Communist Party: that’s not theoretical for me, and for years I have expressed my disgust at the establishment strategy of ‘engaging’ with the communist regime in China in the hope that this would one day move them towards freedom and democracy,” Republican California gubernatorial candidate and Former Fox News host Steve Hilton told Fox News Digital.

“These people never give up power voluntarily and they are always on the look-out for the ‘useful idiots’ and gullible stooges who they can target with their influence operations. Seems like they found the perfect mark in Eric Swalwell, and it’s somewhat alarming that the poor judgment is still being repeated, as we learned with the recent revelations about CCP-linked donations to his campaign,” he added.

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Swalwell served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) when news broke of his ties to Fang Fang, who “liked” the photo posted in 2013 of Swalwell and Ru’an. Swalwell’s role on the influential intel committee was one that dealt with sensitive national security matters other members of Congress are not privy to. Now, he is asking voters to elevate him to governor of a state at the center of U.S.-China trade and tech. 

Earlier that same year, Swalwell attended an event hosted by the California State University, East Bay Chinese Student Association, a group that was led by Fang Fang, to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that Beijing uses diplomats and influence networks like the United Front to cultivate relationships with American politicians, making even routine-looking interactions politically combustible when they involve a lawmaker already shadowed by foreign-influence scrutiny.

“Swalwell met Fang Fang when he was on the city council. He continued a long relationship with her and she would direct him. She directed interns in his office,” former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Fox News Digital. “And it wasn’t just Swalwell who had knowledge of her. I believe people in his family became friends with her as well. But his activity and his behavior is very disturbing.”

“The report that I received, he never should have been on Intel,” McCarthy told Fox News Digital, citing the briefing he and other senior level members of Congress received after news broke about Swalwell, Fang Fang and the alleged influence operation she was part of. “The knowledge that I have of what transpired and the actions that he has done and the behavior, especially when he’s gone to other countries, I would be very leery of him in any position of that can have sensitive information. The recklessness in which he lived his life, the reports that have come back, I think it would be hard for him to ever even be considered as a governor candidate, period.”

A handful of current and former intelligence officials told Axios in 2020 that they believed Fang Fang, who also goes by Christine Fang, was part of an influence operation run by China’s Ministry of State Security between roughly 2011 and 2015. The outlet reported that Fang Fang gained proximity to political power through campaign fundraising and networking, adding that she engaged in sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors, and was also targeting elected officials in California.

Swalwell’s earliest ties to Fang Fang began in 2012 when he was seen posing in a photo with her during his time as a council member for Dublin City, California. The reported “student event” was attended by Fang Fang, who Axios indicated was a leader for her school’s Chinese Student Association and its Asian Pacific American Public Affairs chapter. The pair was identified posing in another photo together the following year at a Chinese New Year banquet held at Fang Fang’s college.

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Meanwhile, between 2013 and 2014, Fang Fang helped fundraise at an event for Tulsi Gabbard, according to a flyer of the event she shared on Facebook, and also volunteered for Rep. Ro Khanna’s, D-Calif., failed House bid, other social media posts and talks with a former organizer indicated, according to Axios. Fang Fang appeared in photos with Swalwell, Khanna, Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., and others across a period of several years around this time as well. According to an intelligence official and a Bay Area politico, Fang Fang took part in fundraising activity for Swalwell’s 2014 campaign and allegedly helped place an intern in his office, while also interacting with the California congressman at multiple events across several years.

Eventually, U.S. intelligence officials became so concerned with Fang Fang’s activities that they alerted Swalwell and other members of Congressional leadership in 2015. At the time, Pelosi was serving as House Minority Leader while McCarthy was the House Majority Leader, but McCarthy indicated he was not briefed then. Meanwhile, Swalwell  immediately cut ties with Fang Fang upon the defensive briefing, sources speaking to Axios said. McCarthy has questioned how long Pelosi knew about Swalwell’s ties to Fang Fang, and whether she was aware of them prior to appointing him to the influential House intel committee. 

Shortly after Axios broke its investigation of Swalwell’s ties to Fang Fang in 2020, top-level Democrats and Republicans, including then-House Minority Leader McCarthy and then-House Speaker Pelosi, received further briefings on the matter, which was followed by GOP calls for Swalwell to be removed from the HPSCI. The high-level committee exercises primary congressional oversight over the U.S. intelligence community and is privy to classified information other members of Congress are not.  

Swalwell has denied any wrongdoing and a multi-year congressional ethics report backed that assertion and did not take any further action against the congressman over his questionable associations.

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In 2021, House Republicans attempted to formally remove Swalwell from the House intel committee, but Democrats had the power and killed the bill. Upon the power in Congress shifting to Republican hands the following Congressional session, then-Speaker of the House McCarthy rejected Swalwell’s attempt to maintain his seat on the powerful committee and he was pushed out in 2023.

McCarthy said he wasn’t trying to take advantage of the opportunity to “punish” Democrats, but, rather, was so alarmed by Swalwell’s behavior that he felt it was necessary to protect national security. 

“Based upon my classified knowledge, and based upon being Speaker – the reports that have come to me are very disturbing, his continual actions and behavior,” McCarthy added. “I don’t understand how a man like him would consider running just based upon that knowledge.”