The Office of New York Governor Kathy Hochul communicated with the Bank of China’s U.S. arm through WeChat, a Chinese messaging app that is notoriously susceptible to Beijing’s surveillance and censorship. But the governor’s team claims it can’t find the messages, despite releasing internal emails which specifically refer to the WeChat correspondence.
That’s noteworthy because it suggests that the governor’s office communicated with the Chinese state-owned banking giant’s U.S. subsidiary and failed to retain the messages as government records. The missing WeChat messages also call attention to the Hochul administration’s reluctance to publicly account for its extensive contacts with China’s government.
Several states and federal agencies have banned the app from government devices, citing evidence that it is beholden to the Chinese authorities. In 2023, as Hochul’s team continued to use WeChat and maintain a robust working relationship with Beijing’s consulate in Manhattan, one of her counterparts, Roy Cooper, the then-governor of North Carolina, signed an order banning the app from state government devices, citing the need to ensure “the safety, security, privacy, and success of our state and its people.” Last year, the Pentagon designated WeChat parent Tencent a “Chinese military company,” alleging that it has indirect ties to the People’s Liberation Army.
As messages relating to official government business, the WeChat messages would be subject to mandatory public disclosure under the New York Freedom of Information Law.
The governor’s office first disclosed emails alluding to the elusive WeChat messages in response to a request for public records earlier this year.
Those emails show that the Bank of China USA invited the New York governor to an April 2023 reception at its Manhattan office to “celebrate AAPI achievement.” That event, which Hochul did not attend, was headlined by Eileen Gu, the Chinese-American Olympian who competed for Beijing in 2022 and 2026.
Bank of China USA Senior Vice President Catherine Feng (馮玉慧) emailed Elaine Fan (范小江), a New York political operative who was then serving as Hochul’s director of Asian affairs, to discuss the invitation, referring to a previous conversation that took place over WeChat.
“As I mentioned over wechat, Mr. Wei Hu (胡威), CEO and President of Bank of China U.S.A and Chairman of China General Chamber of Commerce (CGCC), would like to invite Governor Kathy Hochul to speak,” Feng wrote, also referring to a nonprofit group that counts several Chinese state-owned enterprises among its members.
Hochul’s office disclosed that email in February. But when asked later to provide the WeChat communications referenced in the email, the New York State governor’s office said, in a message on March 25, that it “conducted a diligent search of available records and did not locate” the requested messages.
On April 13, the governor’s office doubled down on its assertion that it could not find the WeChat messages. A senior counsel for the governor wrote that she reviewed the matter and confirmed that the office “conducted a diligent search of available records and did not locate records.”
In response to further emailed inquiries, the unit within the governor’s office that oversees public records requests later said that its search included “all available records” in its possession, including “the government issued mobile device issued to Elaine Fan, and did not find any WeChat messages.”
The disclosures suggested that Hochul’s office might also have used WeChat to communicate with the influential lobby group for Chinese state-owned enterprises in America, the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, to coordinate a speech that Hochul delivered at that group’s 2023 gala.
Ahead of that event, the director of the chamber’s tax-exempt foundation, through which it organizes the gala, spoke with Fan, then followed up via email after the call to provide the Hochul staffer with her WeChat contact info.
According to planning documents for the gala, which the governor’s office received from CGCC at the time and later disclosed as public records, Hochul and Bank of China USA president Wei Hu were slated to present an award to Winfred Zhang (張偉峰), the chairman of SCG America Group. That company is the U.S. subsidiary of the state-owned Shanghai Construction Group.
The CGCC documents also show that the group planned to seat Hochul at the gala’s head table, with executives from subsidiaries of China Unicom, China Mobile and China State Construction Engineering Corporation — firms which the Pentagon has designated as “Chinese military companies.” The gala was slated to be livestreamed on CGTN television networks, a subsidiary of Beijing’s state propaganda broadcaster CCTV and the CCP’s Propaganda Department.
Disclosure of the Hochul administration’s communications with the Bank of China comes as it faces scrutiny for its interactions with China’s government. In September, a front-page story in The New York Times highlighted the role that a delegate to a critical Chinese Communist Party organ played in financing Hochul’s 2021 run for governor.
In December, a New York jury returned a mistrial in the case against Linda Sun, a former staffer for Hochul facing federal charges for allegedly acting at the direction of the Chinese Consulate General in New York and Chinese Communist Party arms.
Hochul’s office is known to stonewall requests under New York’s public records law — often furnishing incomplete or factually implausible answers. Government reform groups criticized Hochul’s 2025 veto of legislation that they say would bolster government transparency by reducing “the often interminable delays and agency obstructionism that keeps government records in New York from the public.”
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