No More Kowtowing — Protecting Our Country From China

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Fifty years ago, could anyone have imagined the former Soviet Union going on a buying spree in our country gobbling up our farmland and our food companies, buying up colleges and universities or exerting considerable influence in our higher learning institutions, and purchasing our real estate to use as their own police stations? It would have been unthinkable. Yet this is what the Chinese Communist Party and CCP-supported businesses have been doing in our country in the last several years. How could this dangerous turn of events been allowed happen?

First, I want to state unequivocally that the comments in this article are not aimed at law-abiding Chinese in our country. There are many Chinese-Americans in our country, and Chinese nationals living legally in our country, who have left communist China because of their determination to live free from oppressive government policies. This article addresses the CCP and its controlled entities operating in our country.

China began its U.S. land grab around 2010. By 2015, China bought up land valued at $1.4 billion (https://moneymorning.com/2017/07/07/why-china-is-snatching-land-from-u-s-farmers/). By 2022, China owned land valued at $6.1 billion, and the Chinese government or CCP-supported entities have become the dominant foreign purchasers of U.S. housing (https://marketrealist.com/real-estate/why-is-china-buying-us-farmland/). Much of the land purchased by China is situated near our military bases, and a number of houses in D.C., some very close to the Capitol, have been bought by Chinese nationals (https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/26/in-bills-to-bar-communist-china-from-buying-us-land-we-need-big-strides-not-baby-steps/). In total, Chinese nationals have spent $11.5 billion across the U.S. in house purchases alone.

In Bristol, Virginia, the old Intermont College campus was bought by a Chinese “investor” in 2016 with the intention of establishing a new, Chinese-owned university. Since that time the college’s buildings sit rotting, occupied by bats, rats, and other vermin, and by the local homeless community. Taxes on the property are in arrears. Apparently, there are other vacant real estate around the country owned by Chinese entities. This cannot be good for the housing market and local economies.

Why should this be of concern? The most obvious answer is that China’s communist government has demonstrated in a variety of ways to be our economic, technological, and military enemy.

A country’s reliable food supply is vital for its survival. What kind of damage could CCP-owned agricultural businesses do to our food supply and to our economy?

In February of this year the Grand Forks, North Dakota city council made national news when it ruled unanimously that the Chinese-owned Fufeng Group that had purchased $2.3 million in agricultural land for corn milling purposes could not build or grow anything on that land. The land is very close to a U.S. military base and Fufeng’s purchase of that land has been deemed a national security risk. Fufeng still owns the land, but due to the city council’s decision Fufeng is prevented from utilizing it in any way. When the city council announced its decision at the public meeting, attended by no small crowd of concerned citizens, loud cheers of “USA!” erupted.

Since the federal government has failed under Democrat and Republican leadership to put a stop to an enemy nation’s land grab, various states have already enacted laws or are proposing bills to deny China and CCP-supported companies any kind of U.S. land purchases. Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota and Oklahoma now have laws that ban any foreign purchase of farmland. South Dakota and Texas have bills proposed for their 2023 legislative session to ban the sale of property to foreign nations. But the loopholes in these laws allow Chinese investors to buy large U.S. agricultural businesses, and until those loopholes are closed, China will still be able to exert a dangerous level of control over our food supply. On February 2 of this year, Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) introduced the Prohibition of Agricultural Land for the People’s Republic of China Act. Let’s see if it gains enough traction in the House and the Senate to become federal law.

Over the years there have been multiple incidents of China hacking into our government agencies and into our businesses. Our universities have been used as bases of CCP espionage and for the theft of our technology and medical research. So many of our essential goods are manufactured in China. How many of the goods we purchase from China are made by Uighurs and other political and ethnic prisoners? And on the topic of prisons, what gives with the CCP setting up their own police stations and holding cells in our country and in other countries? This is outrageous. Meanwhile, some of our federal legislators assure us that they are going to get to the bottom of the Wuhan gain-of-function “leak” that resulted in COVID-19’s global mass death, but will anyone ever really know China’s complete role in this or in future pandemics? On the military front, joint Chinese-Russian naval training exercises in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean are most obviously not intended to be mere fun and games, nor can we make the mistake of thinking that these exercises are harmless saber rattling. We are not the only country in which the Chinese government has become such an active presence, but we’re definitely the biggest fish.

For the last thirty years or so our policies of allowing a foreign aggressor to exert so much control in our country have been sowing the seeds of our own economic, military, and social destruction. We must pursue an immediate about-face in our policies with China. Our survival depends on it.

Paulette J. Buchanan is a former educator and college professor. In 2020 she spoke on Cults and the Law at the International Cultic Studies Association/University of Tennessee’s Nashville conference. In 2019 she spoke on Legislative Action at ICSA’s Santa Fe conference.

Buchanan’s book Fighting for Justice: Religious Fraud, Mental Illness, and the Collapse of Law & Order describes her lifetime of abuse caused by her four older brothers, including their weaponization of the court system to file meritless lawsuits against her and many others. She finally obtained long overdue judgments and injunctions to put a stop to their lawsuits.

For more information and to purchase Paulette J. Buchanan’s book, Fighting for Justice: Religious Fraud, Mental Illness, and the Collapse of Law & Order, please visit her website www.fightingforjusticebook.com, or order her book on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Paulette-Buchanan/e/B09N4ZBGY2%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share.