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“时报内情”(Times Insider)专栏向读者介绍我们的记者和他们的工作，为读者呈现《纽约时报》报道的幕后故事。

It sounded like something out of a spy novel rather than a tip about New York politics. Yet credible sources kept telling us that China is pushing its agenda into American democracy by screening candidates, targeting lawmakers and throwing its weight around in New York elections.

这些听起来更像是间谍小说里的情节，而不是关于纽约的政治内幕。然而，可靠的信源不断告诉我们，中国政府正在美国的民主活动中推动自己的议程，做法包括筛查候选人，将立法者作为攻击目标，对纽约市的选举施加影响。

We know from the U.S. government and extensive news reports that China and its intermediaries have made some aggressive moves on American soil, from hacking into cellphone networks to setting up an illegal police station — used to harass Chinese dissidents — above a noodle house in Manhattan’s Chinatown.

我们从美国政府和大量新闻报道了解到，从入侵手机网络到在曼哈顿唐人街的一家面馆楼上设立了一个用于骚扰中国异见人士的非法警务站，中国及其中间人已在美国领土上采取过一些攻击性的做法。

Still, we stepped into this reporting gingerly. After all, writing about Chinese influence in the United States can be dicey. It’s all too easy to slip into what we call “reds under the bed” reporting: assuming that contact with people associated with the Leninist government of America’s most powerful adversary implies wrongdoing. It usually doesn’t.

尽管如此，我们还是谨慎地开始了这次报道。毕竟，写有关中国在美国进行影响力运动的文章可能会冒险，太容易陷入我们称为“床下藏着赤色分子”的那种报道，让读者觉得与美国最强大对手的列宁主义政府有关的人接触，就意味着作恶。但事实通常并非如此。

We must also be wary of taking the statements of sometimes overzealous prosecutors at face value, a painful lesson learned a quarter-century ago in the case of the nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee.

我们也必须警惕，不能全盘接受有时过分积极的检察官的陈述，这是我们从25年前对核科学家李文和案的报道中得到的一个惨痛教训。

The deeper we dug, though, the more evidence we found that China’s influence on its huge diaspora in New York City was creating an environment where ethnic Chinese candidates — from City Council hopefuls to candidates for Congress — who didn’t toe Beijing’s line confronted long odds to win or even hold on to their elected office.

然而，越深入调查，我们就发现有越多的证据表明，中国政府对居住在纽约市的庞大侨民群体的影响正在形成一种大环境：对从想当市议员到想当国会议员的华裔候选人来说，如果不遵循北京的路线，他们很难获胜，甚至难以保住已被选上的公职。

Political sins might include support for more civil liberties in Hong Kong; a dream of a future democratic China; or sympathy for Taiwan, which Beijing considers to be a province of the mainland.

被中国政府视为政治上不可饶恕的罪过可能包括支持香港公民有更多的自由，梦想中国将在未来实现民主，或同情被北京视为大陆一个省份的台湾。

These are political stances embraced by both Republicans and Democrats across the United States. But in large swaths of New York City, we were hearing, they were toxic.

这些都是被美国各地的两党人士接受的政治立场。但我们听到情况是，在纽约市的大片地区，这些立场是“有毒的”。

Case in point: We uncovered that Iwen Chu, a New York state senator born in Taiwan, was raked over the coals for attending a banquet with the Taiwanese president in 2023. First a high-ranking official in the Chinese Consulate confronted her, and then Ms. Chu found herself being ostracized by community leaders with close ties to the Chinese government. She was the only New York state senator to lose re-election last November.

一个典型的例子是：我们发现，出生于台湾的纽约州议会参议员曲怡文曾因在2023年出席了台湾总统的宴会而遭到严厉训斥。先是中国领事馆的一名高级官员当面质问她，然后曲怡文发现，自己遭到了与中国政府关系密切的社区领袖的排挤。去年11月，她成了纽约州议会竞选连任的参议员中唯一的一名败选者。

And we reported on the shocking case of Yan Xiong, a former leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising in China who ran for Congress in New York in 2022. Federal prosecutors said an agent from China’s Ministry of State Security conspired with a private investigator to undermine his candidacy and discussed beating him or hiring a prostitute to seduce him.

我们报道的案例中还有熊焱这样令人震惊的情况。熊焱是1989年天安门广场抗议活动的学生领袖之一，曾在2022年竞选纽约州议会众议员。联邦检察官说，中国国家安全部的一名特工雇了一名私家侦探，合谋破坏熊焱的竞选人资格，还讨论了殴打熊焱或雇佣妓女对其进行引诱的做法。

在某个被用来施加中国影响力的同乡会里，同时设有市议员庄文怡的办公室和隶属于市议员威廉·科尔顿的俱乐部。

We have been investigating China’s covert influence campaigns in America, for almost a year. So far, most of our work has focused on New York, home to the largest ethnic Chinese community outside East Asia.

近一年来，我们一直在调查中国在美国开展的秘密影响力活动。到目前为止，我们的大部分调查工作聚焦在纽约市，这里是东亚以外最大的华裔社区所在地。

We had built a strong network of sources while uncovering the improbable rise of John Chan, a former heroin trafficker and human smuggler who became a political power broker in Brooklyn. We also investigated Winnie Greco, a top fund-raiser and former adviser to Mayor Eric Adams, and her ties to people and groups connected to Beijing. Her homes were raided last year by federal investigators looking for evidence of Chinese interference in the 2021 mayor’s race.

我们建立了一个强劲的信源网，同时发现了陈善庄不可思议的崛起故事，他曾因参与海洛因贩运和人口走私而被定罪，后来成为布鲁克林的政治权力掮客。我们还调查了郑祺蓉，她是纽约市市长埃里克·亚当斯的一名顶级筹款人和前顾问，调查了她与中国政府存在关联的人士和团体的关系。去年，联邦调查人员为寻找中国干预2021年纽约市市长竞选的证据，突击搜查了她的住所。

That aide and another Adams supporter also caused a stir after reports last week that they had given red envelopes of cash to some journalists at his events this summer.

郑祺蓉和亚当斯的另一名支持者上周还引发了一场轩然大波，此前有报道称，她们曾在今年夏天的竞选集会上把现金红包发给一些记者。

We learned through dozens of interviews that the Chinese government wields its influence in New York politics through diaspora organizations that are usually organized around people from the same village, city, or province in China. We use the blanket term “hometown associations” to describe these in our investigation. Chinese diplomats at the country’s New York consulate on Manhattan’s West Side were in constant communication with leaders of these groups.

我们从数十次采访中了解到，中国政府通过海外侨民组织对纽约政治施加影响，这些组织通常由来自同一个村、同一个城市或省份的华裔人士组成。我们在做调查报道时使用了“同乡会”这个统称来描述这些组织。设在曼哈顿西区的中国驻纽约总领事馆的外交官们与同乡会的领导人保持着沟通。

纽约市华人社区的权力掮客陈善庄在去年4月的美国亚裔妇女联合总会活动上获奖。

We found a rich vein of material in Chinese government announcements and articles in the local Chinese-language press to build up multiple databases. We created a list of more than 200 New York hometown organizations that had forged ties to the consulate, tracked their political involvement (which we found was often unlawful because of their tax-exempt status), documented their interactions with China’s consulate, and analyzed campaign contributions from the community.

我们从中国政府的公告和纽约当地中文媒体的报道中找到了丰富的资料，并以此建立了多个数据库。我们列出了200多个与领事馆有联系的纽约同乡会，追踪它们的政治参与情况（我们发现这些参与往往是非法的，因为同乡会享有免税资格），记录了它们与中国领事馆的互动，分析了来自社区的竞选捐款。

We also built a comprehensive list of diplomats at the consulate, complete with their pictures so that we could readily identify them at events, and analyzed voting behaviors in majority-Chinese neighborhoods.

我们还建立了一份完整的领事馆外交官名单，并附上他们的照片，方便我们能在活动场合认出他们，并分析了华裔占多数社区的投票行为。

Perhaps our most important resource for mapping out Beijing’s influence is a tool that, ironically, is banned in China: YouTube. It turns out that hometown associations often hire a videographer to record their many gala events, from Lunar New Year to their elaborate banquets — held once every two years — where new leaders of the groups take an oath of office.

我们把中国政府的影响力与华裔社区联系起来的最重要资源也许是一个在中国被禁的工具：YouTube，这颇为讽刺。原来，同乡会经常聘请摄像师来记录它们的各种庆典活动，从农历新年到每隔两年举行的同乡会新领导宣誓就职的盛大宴会。

After scraping and watching hundreds of hours of video, we learned that many of these “patriotic” groups have Chinese consular officials administer these oaths, which often parrot official Chinese policy such as “reunification” with Taiwan, a thriving island democracy that fears an invasion from the mainland, and “rejuvenation” of the nation, a buzzword that China’s president, Xi Jinping, often invokes. We found 35 videos where consular officials were administering the oaths from the past 10 years. Here, and in other areas of our work, we relied on the assistance of the Cantonese and Mandarin-speaking freelancers Mable Chan and Yi Liu.

我们搜索和观看了数百个小时的视频后了解到，许多这些“爱国”团体新任领导的宣誓仪式由中国领事馆的官员主持，誓词经常重复中国的官方政策，例如与民主自治、担心中国大陆入侵的繁荣岛屿台湾实现“统一”，以及中国国家主席习近平经常挂在嘴边的“民族复兴”等。我们找到了35段过去十年间领事官员主持宣誓的视频。在我们的这些和其他工作中，我们会讲粤语和普通话的自由撰稿人陈美宝（音）和刘怡为我们提供了帮助。

Working with our colleague David Fahrenthold, a reporter who investigates nonprofits, we discovered that these hometown groups and other tax-exempt Chinese American associations have been documenting their political activities in high-res video. We identified more than 50 organizations with ties to Beijing that have mobilized members to fund-raise or endorse political candidates over the past five years. Many were nonprofit charities, which are prohibited by law from electioneering.

我们与同事戴维·法伦霍尔德一起合作，他是调查非营利组织的记者，我们发现，这些同乡会和其他享受免税待遇的华裔美国人协会一直在用高清视频记录它们的政治活动。我们发现50多个与中国政府有联系的团体在过去五年中动员成员筹款或支持政治候选人的情况。它们中许多是非营利慈善机构，法律禁止它们参与选举活动。

We bolstered our reporting with numerous freedom of information requests to city, state and federal agencies, and interviewed dozens of prosecutors, politicians and China experts. We examined hundreds of pages of court documents and public records, attended political fund-raiser and community events, visited dozens of hometown associations and their leaders, covered election rallies, monitored consular events and tallied government appropriations.

为加强我们的报道，我们向市、州，以及联邦机构提出了大量信息自由请求，采访了数十名检察官、政界人士和中国问题专家。我们查阅了数百页法庭文件和公开的记录，参加了政治筹款和社区活动，访问了数十个同乡会及其领导人，现场报道了竞选集会，跟踪调查了领事馆的活动，并统计了政府拨款。

And we met with many people who offered us tips.

我们与许多向我们提供内幕消息的人见了面。

Some threads remain untangled, and we are eager to follow them. If you have information, share it with us at nytimes.com/tips.

有些线索尚未厘清，我们非常想继续追寻。如果您有信息与我们分享，请访问nytimes.com/tips。