Selling America, Part 2

Given its hold on many American Democrat politicians, Joe Biden among them, and its aggressive global stance, it is not surprising that during testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2019, FBI Director Christopher Wray emphasized: “there is no country that poses a more severe counterintelligence threat right now than China.”

Currently 30 million acre of American farmland is owned by foreign investors.  For context, that’s an area roughly the size of Mississippi or Pennsylvania.  These are effectively absentee landlords who own some of the best real estate in the United States.  Only Six states — Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota and Oklahoma — currently ban foreign ownership of farmland.

Of that 30 million, China had purchased 191,000 acres by 2019, throughout the United States worth $1.9 billion.  This might not sound like a lot, but Chinese ownership of American farmland has exploded dramatically over the last decade. Indeed, there has been a tenfold expansion of Chinese ownership of farmland in the United States in less than a decade.  Massive Chinese investment in American farmland is troubling for one very obvious reason: It puts the food security of the nation in the hands of a hostile foreign power.

In addition to their farmland holdings, China owns more residential real estate than any other foreign country in both units and dollar volume for six years straight according to the National Association of Realtors in areas ranging from Texas to Alaska, from California to Virginia and everywhere in between.   Sound far-fetched?  According to Market Watch, “Chinese buyers accounted for roughly 25% percent of total foreign investment in U.S. residential real estate.” 

And it’s not just farmland and houses; the concept of Made in America is slowly giving way to “Made by China … in America,” as Chinese investors are increasingly snatching up U.S.-based companies and assets.  These purchases include, but are not limited to, General Electric’s appliance wing, construction manufacturer Terex, Starwood Hotels, Motorola, California-based tech company Ingram Micro and finance and production outfit Legendary Entertainment, the Chicago Stock Exchange,  the New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel and Texas oil wells.

Dozens of Chinese companies have put down roots in Detroit as part of their push into the American auto industry.  One company, Sino-Michigan Properties actually had plans to buy up 200 acres near the town of Milan, Michigan to build an entire “China City” with artificial lakes, a Chinese cultural center and hundreds of housing units for Chinese citizen.  But that was nothing compared to the “China City” that that was in the works for Yankee Lake in Sullivan County, New York.   The plans anticipate large numbers of Chinese businesses, plenty of homes for Chinese immigrants, a Chinese high school, a college, a casino and even a theme park that would eventually cover 2,000 acres.     

Just last year, GH America, a wholly owned subsidiary of Xinjiang based Guanghui Industry Investment Group, purchased 130,000 acres in the West Texas borderlands of Val Verde for what they claim will be the Blue Hills Wind project.  GH America, by the way, is owned by Sun Guangxin, a former member of the People’s Liberation Army. 

The so-called project site could and will probably be used to gather sensitive intel from nearby U.S. military facilities like Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, Lackland and nearby Laughlin Air Force Bases.  Not only would this location give China access to US military personnel but also allow them to monitor US border operations and defenses and plug into critical Texas infrastructure, including its electrical grid.

Isn’t it bad enough that China already has the most active ballistic missile development program in the world using stolen US technology to develop at least three types of high-tech weapons to attack the electric grid and key technologies that could cause a surprise “Pearl Harbor” attack that could produce a deadly blackout to the entire country.  How much more information are we going to allow them to steal?

Food is the oil of the 21st century and China is going on a  buying spree. They now own Armour along with famous Smithfield hams and the most quintessential American brand of all times – Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs. 

The $4.7 billion purchase of Smithfield Foods in 2013 by Shanghui Group, later rebranded WH Group, was underwritten by the Bank of China facilitated by the Chinese Communist Party.  It remains the largest total acquisition of a U.S. company giving the Chinese ownership of 460 pig farms along with an additional 146,000 of American farmland and access to the world’s most advanced animal processing technology.   Smithfield is operated by Wan Long, a former foot soldier in Mao Zedong’s army. 

Do we really want a foreign superpower to physically own so much of our territory?  There are some that are playing down this threat by making a distinction between the Chinese government and Chinese corporations, but things work differently over in China than they do here. In China, the government is involved in everything.  In fact, 43% of all corporate profits in China are produced by companies that the Chinese government controls. And all of the rest of the companies are very careful to follow the lead and direction of the Communist government or cease to exist.

Source:  Deep in the Heart of Texas, a Chinese Wind Farm Raises Eyebrows by  Jack Detsch, Robbie Grammer, Foreign Policy Insider;  China is buying up America’s food supply by Ziva Dahl, The American Thinker; China Is Buying Large Chunks Of Land Across America And Could Become Dominant Landowner by Steven Straub, The Federalist Papers b

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