Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) introduced legislation Friday that would ban any members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from purchasing public or private real estate in the United States.
According to a press release, the Securing America’s Land from Foreign Interference Act will ensure that the United States’ land is never in control of the CCP.
“In their quest for global domination, China has been buying up land and strategic infrastructure all over the world and in the United States,” Roy wrote. “Direct Chinese investment in the U.S. economy is a major threat to the American way of life and requires that we take serious action to thwart the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from ever seizing control of strategically valuable domestic assets in the U.S.”
Roy wrote that the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows foreign investors currently control almost 30 million acres of farmland in the United States, roughly equal to the size of Ohio. Roy’s own state of Texas has 3 million acres of land under foreign control, the congressman said, making it the state with the second-highest amount of non-American ownership.
“In Texas, a Chinese based energy company purchased more than 130,000 acres of land near Laughlin Air Force Base and is now attempting to build a wind farm to access the U.S. power grid,” Roy wrote.
The U.S. isn’t the only country whose land is being bought up by the Chinese Communist regime. China is the second-largest foreign owner of land in Australia, and a Chinese real estate company recently purchased an Australian island before barring Australian residents from living there.
New York Post reported that residents said they were banned from returning to their homes since the Beijing-backed real estate company China Bloom bought a 99-year lease of Keswick Island in 2019. Residents demanded the Queensland government cancel the Chinese company’s lease and restore local ownership of the island, according to Sky News.
“I just don’t think they want Australians on the island,” former island resident Julie Willis told the Australian news program A Current Affair in December. “I think that they want to have this island solely for the use of the Chinese tourism market.”
Last month, President Joe Biden’s top official on Asian foreign policy said the period of U.S. engagement with China has come to an end and a period of intense competition with China has begun.
Speaking at a Stanford University hosted event reported by Bloomberg, Kurt Campbell said, “The period that was broadly described as engagement has come to an end” adding that U.S.-China policy will now operate under a “new set of parameters” and “the dominant paradigm is going to be competition.”
Campbell noted that recent actions by the Communist nation, including the Chinese military clash with Indian troops along their border and an “economic campaign” against Australian goods “signals that China is determined to play a more assertive role” on the world stage.
