Explained | How a criminal with close ties to China became a New York power broker

Chan's participation reflected a remarkable proximity to the highest levels of power in China, experts said, and marked him as a person on whom the country's leaders might call for favours.

On a Monday in March, in the heart of China's capital, more than 2,000 delegates of a rubber-stamp advisory body to the authoritarian government of President Xi Jinping gathered for their annual meeting.

One mission of the men and women in attendance was to spread the global influence of China's Communist Party. Of the throngs of party officials, generals and business executives who watched as Xi took the stage, just 20 people had been invited to represent the country's vast diaspora, including a single person from the United States: a 69-year-old man from the New York City borough of Brooklyn named John Chan.

Chan's participation reflected a remarkable proximity to the highest levels of power in China, experts said, and marked him as a person on whom the country's leaders might call for favors. But it was remarkable, too, because of his position at home: He has operated as a power broker in America's largest city, with immense sway over an important subset of New York politics.

For years, Chan has exerted influence over the city's ethnic Chinese communities -- reaching into backrooms and political clubhouses from Sunset Park in Brooklyn to Manhattan's Chinatown to Flushing in Queens -- to help sway elections, all without drawing much attention.

But lately, federal investigations into foreign influence efforts have swirled around city and state government in New York. Mayor Eric Adams has been charged with conspiring to accept illegal foreign campaign contributions from Turkey. He has pleaded not guilty. One of his top aides, an Asian affairs director with ties to China, had her homes searched in an investigation by Brooklyn federal prosecutors who have separately brought cases against people they suspect of being Chinese agents. The same prosecutors recently accused an aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul of serving the Chinese government by blocking Taiwanese officials from the governor's office.

Chan, now 70, has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the investigations. But against the backdrop of recent events, he has stood out nonetheless, both for his overt connections to the Chinese government and for his ability to influence U.S. elections up and down the ballot.

He has done it, in part, through a network of nonprofits that he and his allies control, directing money, staffing and votes to his favored candidates and organizing demonstrations against anyone opposed to Xi or his policies.

His targets have been politicians on either side of the aisle who might be perceived as acting against the interests of the Chinese government, records and interviews show -- by supporting Hong Kong's anti-Beijing protests, for instance, or attending a reception for a visiting dignitary from Taiwan, the island democracy that China claims as its own.

Just weeks ago, Chan helped unseat a Taiwan-born Democratic incumbent in a state Senate race in Brooklyn. It was the only Senate seat the Democrats lost this cycle.

And in 2022, Chan's support for a little-known congressional candidate in New York City probably influenced the outcome of the Democratic primary in the race, leading to the defeat of a Taiwan-born state assembly member.

Chan did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and he eventually declined, through his lawyer, to answer written questions sent in English and Chinese.

Officials who have gotten on his bad side described him as a daunting political foe.

"I've never seen a Chinese American go abroad and sit in these meetings that are openly CCP-driven and then come back and brag about it," said one of those officials, state Assembly member Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat, using the abbreviation for the Chinese Communist Party. "This is a whole different level of brazen propaganda."

Chan has participated in trips to China, paid for by his business association and with the support of the Chinese Consulate, with more than a dozen state lawmakers and business executives. The most recent occurred last December.

Such trips are not illegal, and local, state and federal lawmakers have been making similar journeys for years.

Still, the Beijing meeting that Chan attended in March was a session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the top organization in China's United Front system -- a network of groups that seek to deepen the Communist Party's influence inside China and globally.

In New York, Chan founded a business association; a Brooklyn-based nonprofit advocating Asian American rights; and a group for people from his hometown in China.

They have helped to promote China's political agenda, according to a New York Times review of Chinese-language articles and videos, which identified dozens of events in New York City attended by Chinese officials.

Besides the trips that Chan led to China, he has also appeared at several events with Hochul and Adams, most recently mingling with the mayor at a Brooklyn festival in February.

Throughout it all, perhaps the most extraordinary element of Chan's rise to prominence in New York politics was not his ties to the Chinese Communist Party, but a part of his personal history that he has taken pains to hide from his supporters: that he was a felon, having pleaded guilty, in another life, to human smuggling and heroin trafficking.

From Smuggler to Informant

When he first arrived in New York City more than 30 years ago, Chan had already been a member of a Chinese crime organization.

As a young man in the 1970s, he had escaped the poverty and chaos of China under Mao Zedong by sneaking into Hong Kong, then a British colony. There he joined a gang, according to a 2022 Chinese-language profile in which he was interviewed at a Brooklyn restaurant he owned.

Immigrating to New York, he joined the Wo Lee Kwan triad and got into the lucrative business of smuggling Chinese citizens into the United States, court documents show. In China, such smugglers are known as "snakeheads," and at the time, they charged about $40,000 per person for the journey, with the migrants usually routed through other countries before arriving in the United States.

At the same time that he was running his criminal operation, Chan was emerging as an important figure in New York's Chinese immigrant community -- as a restaurateur and as an activist.

In 1999, he organized a protest of the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, which U.S. officials said was a targeting error but which many Chinese considered a deliberate act.

In 2000, one of the companies he founded, a production firm, employed Winnie Greco, the Adams aide and Asian affairs liaison whose homes would be searched 24 years later by federal authorities, records show.

His rise was interrupted in July 2001, when he and three of his accomplices were charged with, among other things, smuggling Chinese migrants inside shipping containers at ports in Washington state.

In September 2002, Chan, also known as Chen Shanzhuang and Ah Jong, stood before a federal judge in lower Manhattan and prepared to take responsibility for what he had done.

He faced a potential lifetime prison sentence if convicted. But Chan also had information that could help bring down a murderous Chinatown crime boss named Frank Ma, whose hit man had once forced two men to kneel in front of a gravestone before he shot them in the head. One FBI agent called Ma "the last of the Asian godfathers."

In January 2008, after assisting investigators from jail for more than five years, Chan stood before the same judge again.

"I decided to cooperate with the government to begin to make up for the harm I have done," Chan told the judge, Denny Chin. "If you allow me to return to my family, I will never again break the law."

He had pleaded guilty to a charge of racketeering that included human smuggling and trafficking more than 3 kilos of heroin, and another charge of operating illegal gambling parlors. He was sentenced to time served and released. Ma was arrested and, in 2010, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

At Chan's sentencing, Chin noted his "extensive cooperation" in the case against Ma. "The results were quite good," Chin said. "The Ma organization was dismantled."

Through his lawyer, Joel Cohen, Chan declined to discuss his criminal past.

'The King of Brooklyn'

Fast-forward to 2014, and U.S. Rep. Grace Meng, a Queens Democrat, was issuing a proclamation that declared July 26 "John Chan Day."

"Since his arrival to the United States," Meng wrote, "Mr. Chan has pursued and exemplified the American dream."

Asked recently about Chan's efforts to influence U.S. elections, she said in a statement: "I am totally against any foreign government influencing or manipulating our democracy." She said she had been unaware of his criminal record.

The main vehicle for Chan's transformation was a nonprofit he had formed to raise the profile of Asian Americans in New York politics and call attention to anti-Asian hate crimes.

Operating from his now-shuttered restaurant in Brooklyn's Sunset Park, the group, Asian American Community Empowerment, and other organizations he founded worked to help Chinese immigrants navigate the city's bureaucracy.

Soon, the Chinese-language press was calling Chan "The King of Brooklyn," and letters of support were pouring in from Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other prominent figures.

From this perch, Chan has promoted his favored candidates and gone after those who displeased him.

His effort to unseat Iwen Chu was a prime example of both.

As a newly elected Democratic state senator from Brooklyn, Chu attended a Manhattan banquet held by Tsai Ing-wen, then Taiwan's president, in March 2023.

During the same visit by Tsai, Chan had led protests outside Tsai's hotel and, speaking into a microphone, had said she "will surely become a sinner for all eternity" -- an insult commonly used by the Chinese government.

When Chu, who was born in Taiwan, came up for reelection this year, Chan threw his support behind her Republican opponent, Steve Chan, a former New York City police sergeant who was born in Hong Kong. (He is not related to John Chan.)

In an interview in September, Steve Chan attempted to distance himself from John Chan, and his campaign manager noted that he had returned a donation from John Chan.

"If the man is associated with the CCP," Steve Chan said, "the best we can do is remain cordial."

He added: "Can we be allies? No. Can we be friends? Sure. But it ends right there."

Two weeks later, he joined John Chan onstage at an event celebrating the 75th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. With a hand draped over the candidate's shoulder, John Chan said to a crowd in Mandarin, "You must vote for him, and send him to the state Senate!"

Steve Chan defeated Chu on Nov. 5.

It was far from the only race John Chan has involved himself in.

He backed a candidate to run against Kim, a Korean American who has represented Flushing in the state Assembly for the past 12 years, in this past summer's Democratic primary. Kim, who had taken delegations to Taiwan and sponsored a resolution celebrating Taiwan Heritage Day, prevailed, but he said Chan had made life more difficult for him by endorsing his opponent through several groups and fundraising for him.

In another race, for a congressional seat representing parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn in 2022, Chan targeted a candidate, Yuh-Line Niou, who, as a state Assembly member, had taken part in events with Taiwan officials. Chan backed a lesser-known contender in the Democratic primary who most likely siphoned off votes in the Chinese American community. Niou's major opponent, Goldman, a former prosecutor who is an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, won the seat and still holds it.

When Chan wished to see another person take control of a Brooklyn state Assembly seat that had been held by Peter J. Abbate, a Democrat, for more than 30 years, the incumbent's lengthy time in office served as little obstacle.

Chan supported his candidate, Lester Chang, with donations and fundraisers, and Chang, a Republican, defeated Abbate in 2022. During his time as an Assembly member, Chang has led a delegation to China. The trip was attended by Chan and was paid for by a business group he founded.

After the election, Chan took credit for the upset, bragging, "We defeated the fool who had been in office for 35 years."

Chang did not respond to requests for comment.

Celebrating 'the Motherland'

Along the way, Chan has also taken to the streets himself, sometimes even clashing with Chinese dissident demonstrators.

After the protest aimed at Taiwan's president in March 2023, he traveled to San Francisco that November to organize groups welcoming a visit by Xi. The demonstrations turned violent as supporters of the Chinese leader, including one of Chan's close associates, clashed with protesters. Chan was recorded while arguing with protesters, The Washington Post reported. On the same visit, he attended an invitation-only reception with Xi.

In July, Chan's nonprofit hosted a "pop-up" branch of the Chinese Consulate in Brooklyn staffed by four consular officials. Such unofficial outposts of China's foreign ministry are part of a "gray zone" of Chinese government efforts to reach into diaspora communities, according to a report by the Jamestown Foundation, which studies Chinese government influence.

After the arrest in September of the Hochul aide, Linda Sun, focused attention on possible influence efforts emanating from the Chinese Consulate in New York, and Hochul called for the consul general, Huang Ping, to be expelled, Chan threw him an elaborate farewell ceremony. (Sun has pleaded not guilty.)

At a restaurant in Flushing, a crowd gathered as Chan led the consul general onto the stage. They posed for photos with Chang, the Assembly member Chan had backed.

Chan praised Huang's tenure as a top Chinese diplomat in New York City -- and saluted the party that has ruled China since 1949.

"Under the strong leadership of the Chinese Communist Party," Chan said in Mandarin, "the motherland has made tremendous achievements in the economy, science and technology, culture and stability, making overseas Chinese feel very proud."