You control the food and farms, you control the people. This is why it is sensible at this time in history to begin social distancing from China.
According to USDA data, since 2019, foreign financiers owned a minimum of 35.2 million acres of U.S. agricultural land. Simply put, 2.7% of privately owned crop, grazing, and forest lands are owned by foreign investors. While the top foreign holders are from Canada and friendly European nations, Chinese owners controlled about 192,000 farming acres in the U.S., worth $1.9 billion, a quantity that has grown rapidly over the past years.
On the domestic real estate side, according to the National Association of Realtors, Chinese nationals are the biggest foreign purchasers of property, totaling $11.5 billion in 2020 alone. Considered that we now make whatever in China, isn’t it obvious that we should not give the Chinese communists a foothold on our own soil to be utilized against us?
Food, energy, medicine– these are the things we must manage in America by Americans. We can not have China further control our food supply at a time of looming shortage. And eventually, the Chinese influence will grow further. China, which is the second biggest foreign owner of land in Australia, purchased an Australian island and then banned its Aussie homeowners from even living there. In 1993, China paid the Australian federal government to lease the Merredin airport for 100 years. Now China owns the airspace and Australian people can’t land in their own country without approval from the Chinese government.
To guarantee we do not have this issue in America, Rep. Chip Roy presented H.R. 3847: The Getting America’s Land from Foreign Disturbance Act, in 2015. The expense would categorically prohibit any member of the Chinese Communist Party from owning public or personal real estate in the U.S. Certainly, with Democrats in control of Congress, a party that has members who literally sleep with Chinese spies, there is no prayer to get this expense passed. However it should not stop red states from instituting statewide bans by themselves.
Last month, Arizona became the very first state to embark on this objective. State Sen. Wendy Rogers introduced Senate Costs 1342, which stipulates that members of the Chinese Communist Party “may not own real property” in the state which any deed such a member presently has is considered void. Her expense was influenced by a narrower piece of legislation signed by the Texas guv in 2015 prohibiting people from China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia from accessing the electrical grid. That costs was born out of local outrage in action to a Chinese billionaire who acquired land to construct a wind farm near Laughlin Flying force Base.
The Arizona bill passed the Commerce Committee along party lines on Feb. 16 and now waits for flooring action in the Senate and then the House. However, many Arizona Republicans revealed reluctance to move the costs forward because they are frightened of being mean to China.
On the other side of the country, South Carolina state Rep. Patrick Haddon wishes to take the divorce from China a step even more and divest all state ties to Chinese companies. “Every Chinese business, without exception, is either bulk owned or controlled by the Chinese Communist Celebration or the People’s Liberation Army,” Haddon stated in a recent interview presenting a series of eight bills severing ties in between the Palmetto State and China. “Buying Chinese companies and working with these companies, at the minimum, contributes monetarily to the Chinese federal government as China remains in the middle of an enormous military accumulation and modernization programs.”
H 4186 would ban all state monetary incentives to specific business owned in part by the Chinese Communist Celebration and prohibit any American business that does business with such companies from receiving state rewards. H 4841 would prohibit state and county federal governments from buying specific Chinese companies. A number of other costs would prohibit state pension funds from being bought Chinese-owned companies. H 4845 bans Chinese business from owning more than 100 acres of land within the state. Finally, H. 5009 would close the state’s commerce office in China and merge it with the workplace in Taiwan.The ownership problem is of grave consequence. Not just do some Chinese nationals directly own land, but they also own big agribusinesses that own a lot of U.S. farm land. The most glaring example is Smithfield, the largest pork producer in the U.S. It was bought out by Chinese firm Shuanghui, now called WH Group, in 2013. The business now owns by proxy 146,000 acres of farmland in Missouri. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) observes, “Missouri had actually formerly prohibited all foreign ownership of agricultural land in the state, however one week before Shuanghui took control of Smithfield, that rule altered to allow foreign entities to own up to 1 percent of the state’s farmland.”
So, what could fail with the Chinese owning the largest pork manufacturer? As the CSIS advises us, “When the pandemic hit, Smithfield increased pork exports to China even as the United States experienced widespread meat lacks due to provide chain interruptions and Smithfield closed a few of its plants due to poor working conditions.”
Haddon’s costs are designed to created to prevent this from happening in South Carolina. These are the sorts of steps that a person would expect to amass bipartisan assistance, yet in every state where they are proposed, every Democrat and many Republicans oppose them. It’s unusual that throughout a time when both celebrations want to penalize all Russians for the actions of Putin, they are dead set against divesting from China, which is more systemically evil throughout its government and is an even larger tactical threat. Just within a week, five significant Hollywood studios pulled the release of Russian movies. But not a word on China, which is threatening to utilize Ukraine as an example against Taiwan.
The Post and Courier reports that Republican Politician Gov. Henry McMaster is “lukewarm” to Haddon’s propositions and has some concerns about the costs. “We need to be mindful and understand what we’re doing,” McMaster stated. “Since we do want to construct trade in South Carolina and have all of our individuals working.”
Rep. Hadden, however, thinks the doubters are being short-sighted by declining to embark on the procedure of weaning our reliance on China. “The political leaders who don’t see the risk posed by the Chinese communist government owning large quantities of American farmland are not taking note.”
According to the Post and Carrier, there are 42 Chinese business with investments in the state worth almost $500 million in capital since 2017. But this simply highlights how precariously linked with and dependent upon China we have actually ended up being. At a minimum, we must start by banning land ownership, which is much more of a security threat, particularly as it associates with farming and the food cycle. “America’s ability to produce our own food is fundamental to our national security, our economic health, and our lifestyle,” alerted Haddon in an interview with TheBlaze.
The financial rewards and pressure from the establishment organization neighborhood are consistently a barrier to eliminating back on worths and security concerns even in red states. Haddon has blunt words for those Republicans. “Political leaders who are marketing on financial advancement at the expenditure of our national security should be ashamed of themselves. South Carolina taxpayers need to not be forced to fund tax incentives that go straight to the Chinese Communist federal government. That shouldn’t be a questionable position for conservative Republicans.”
