China has been buying up strategically located farmland adjacent to military installations across the United States, raising national security concerns about possible espionage and sabotage.
The paper identified 19 bases across the US, from Florida to Hawaii, that are close to land bought by Chinese companies and could be used by spies operating for communist states.
These include some of the military’s most strategically important bases: Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg) in Fayetteville, North Carolina; Fort Cavazos (formerly Fort Hood) in Killeen, Texas; Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California; and MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.
“It’s a concern because of its proximity to strategic sites,” Robert S. Spalding III, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general whose work focuses on U.S.-China relations, told The Washington Post.
“These locations could be used to set up intelligence-gathering centres and, as has been seen in the past, their owners could wield influence in local politics,” he added.
“It’s worrying that there are no laws preventing Chinese people from buying property in the United States.”
Sources told The Washington Post that Chinese landowners may try to set up surveillance sites under the guise of farming, deploy tracking technology, and use radar and infrared scans to inspect bases and even fly drones as a way to monitor military installations.
A September 2023 Wall Street Journal report revealed that Chinese intruders have attempted to infiltrate military facilities more than 100 times in recent years, including infiltrating a missile launch site in New Mexico and spotting scuba divers near a government rocket launch site in Florida.
The threat posed by the Chinese government to the US is significant, with the FBI categorizing it as a “significant threat,” and FBI Director Christopher Wray saying in April that hackers were waiting for the right opportunity to infiltrate US critical infrastructure and “score devastating damage” and “wreak physical havoc.”
The Department of Homeland Security has also warned of the threat of Chinese spies disguised as spies sneaking through the southern U.S. border, with more than 30,000 allowed into the country since last October. According to the DHS 2024 Homeland Threat Assessment, these spies are likely to “conduct economic espionage” and “seek to illegally acquire U.S. technology and intellectual property.”
Morgan Llerett, a former contractor for the private military company Blackwater, is sounding the alarm.
“China will use this farmland to learn more about U.S. military capabilities, movements and technology,” Llerett told the Post.
“This will help us better understand how to transition our military from a defensive to an expeditionary strategy,” he said, explaining that it will also shed light on “how to move forces quickly in preparation for a conflict such as taking over Taiwan, and how and when the U.S. military would respond to an invasion based on troop movements at these bases.”
He added that China was monitoring troops entering and leaving the base to try to understand patterns of behaviour and movement.
“This allows China to study what’s going on and how to counter it. Identifying mobilization is easy if you know what to look for.”
Lleret gave a specific example: “Hearing American soldiers talking in bars… local warehouses being rented out near bases is a sign that soldiers are withdrawing.”
“Trains carrying tanks and Strykers [armored fighting vehicles]and [Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles]”When you see more cargo planes landing and departing from joint bases like Lewis-McChord in Washington, you know that U.S. troops are on the move,” he said. All of this is valuable military knowledge.
According to the latest analysis from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Service, Chinese investors own 349,442 acres of U.S. farmland as of Dec. 31, 2022.
One of Texas’ biggest investors is Sun Guang-hsin, a secretive billionaire with deep ties to the Communist Party, who spent an estimated $110 million to buy land next to Laughlin Air Force Base in Val Verde County, where military pilots train.
While there is no clear evidence of espionage by Guangzhou Steel, which is using the land for a wind farm, the state’s Republican Party is sounding the alarm.
Regarding this project, Senator Ted Cruz told Forbes magazine, “The Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to invest billions of dollars to expand its intelligence capabilities and global influence, including through planned land acquisitions near military bases.”
Fufeng Group, a Shandong Province, China-based company that specializes in seasonings and sugar substitutes, purchased 300 acres of farmland 40 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota in 2022.
Chen Tianqiao, a billionaire and Chinese Communist Party member, is the second-largest foreign farmland owner in the U.S. He bought about 200,000 acres of farmland in Oregon in 2015 for about $430 an acre, according to the Land Report.
However, according to the Daily Caller, his purchase of the property was not listed in government records of land ownership by foreign investors when it was first revealed in January.
China-owned farmland accounts for less than 1 percent of foreign-owned farmland in the United States, but critics say its proximity to key military installations has raised concerns, according to NBC.
For example, Fort Liberty in North Carolina is surrounded within a 30-mile radius by Chinese-owned farmland.
In a move that acknowledged these security risks, the Biden administration in May banned Chinese-backed cryptocurrency mining companies from owning land in Wyoming.
MineOne Partners, a company backed in part by the Chinese, has been told to move the equipment from within a mile of F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne because it is a “national security risk,” according to the Air Force Times.
Potential espionage attempts by Chinese operatives have led the Defense Department, FBI and other agencies to step up scrutiny of so-called “gate crashers” who try to infiltrate U.S. military facilities.
Authorities said the incidents appeared to have been planned primarily to test security measures, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Tensions between the U.S. and China also rose in early 2023 after Chinese surveillance balloons flew over mainland China.
The FBI has previously warned that “the Chinese government engages in widespread and diverse theft and malign influence operations in defiance of laws and international norms, and the FBI will not tolerate it.”
At Fort Wainwright, Alaska, home of the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, a group of Chinese nationals tried to push past security guards, claiming they had booked a hotel on the base.
According to the WSJ, authorities in New Mexico have reported repeated incidents of Chinese nationals straying near White Sands National Park and taking photographs at U.S. military shooting ranges.
The Chinese are also using drones to increase surveillance: An intelligence center in Key West, Florida, has had repeated incidents of Chinese “tourists” swimming and taking photos near military installations.
In 2020, three Chinese nationals were sentenced to prison for trespassing on a naval air base there, either by going around the fence or driving in and ignoring orders to turn back, the WSJ reported.
Meanwhile, the border has proven an even greater threat to American security.
Customs and Border Protection said it had apprehended 24,048 Chinese nationals at the Mexican border through the end of fiscal year 2023, more than 12 times the 1,970 apprehensions in the previous fiscal year.
“They are a communist dictatorship. [Soviet Union]However, they are different in that they are integrated into the global economic system.
“In terms of political influence, they are even more dangerous than the Soviets,” Spalding added.
