Story by Bhavik Grover
A Chinese billionaire has stealthily become the second-largest foreign owner of American farmland, igniting outrage as his holdings come to light.
Chen Tianqiao, an online gaming tycoon with a current net worth of $1 billion according to Forbes, acquired nearly 200,000 acres of timberlands in rural Oregon in 2015 for $85 million.
But the massive purchase only just surfaced this week after Chen appeared for the first time on the Land Report's list of the top 100 private landowners in the US, as reported by Business Insider.
His land purchases put him behind only Canada’s Irving family among foreigner nationals who have purchased American soil. The news of Chen’s American real estate empire has left the internet in a intense frustrated roar.
Not sure what to think about this. Having foreign nationals own American soil is somewhat troubling. Especially from China.
There is no mistake of the Chinese attempts to gather information and secure strategic positions within the US.
Just look at the spies in the US Congress that have been uncovered, remember Rep. Eric Swalwell a democrat from California who was having a sexual relation with a Chinese spy? Remember the Chinese spy ballon that Biden let fly the entire length of our country? And don’t forget the thousands apon thousands of cyber-attacks conducted by the Chinese on the US.
Land purchases: In 2017, the Chinese government offered to spend $100 million to build an ornate Chinese garden at the National Arboretum in Washington, DC. Complete with temples, pavilions and a 70-foot white pagoda, the project thrilled local officials, who hoped it would attract thousands of tourists every year. But when US counterintelligence officials began digging into the details, they found numerous red flags. The pagoda, they noted, would have been strategically placed on one of the highest points in Washington, just two miles from the US Capitol, a perfect spot for signals intelligence collection, multiple sources told CNN last year. Chinese officials wanted to build the pagoda with materials shipped to the US in diplomatic pouches, which US Customs officials are barred from examining, the sources said. Federal officials quietly killed the project before construction started.
Students, business people and scientists CNN has also reported that Beijing has been leaning on expatriate Chinese scientists, businesspeople and even students in the US, according to current and former US intelligence officials, lawmakers and several experts. There have been a number of high-profile arrests. In January, a former graduate student in Chicago was sentenced to eight years in prison for spying for the Chinese government by gathering information on engineers and scientists in the United States.
Chinese engineer sentenced to 8 years in US prison for spying Article
Survey of Chinese Espionage in the United States Since 2000 Article
Here is a small expert from this article outlining some of the tactics used:
The espionage problem is the result of the increasingly hostile policies of China’s ruling Communist Party. Hacking is China’s preferred mode of espionage. We found so many instances of reported Chinese cyber espionage – 104 in the last ten years – that we created a separate list (Appendix A). But hacking is not the only form of spying and China uses traditional methods of agent recruitment (usually sex or money) as well as unconventional approaches, such as buying property next to a military or research facility. While this list is not complete, certain patterns emerge. For those cases where we could identify the actor and intent, we found:
- 49% of incident directly involved Chinese military or government employees.
- 41% were private Chinese citizens.
- 10% were non-Chinese actors (usually U.S. persons recruited by Chinese officials)
- 46% of incidents involved cyber espionage, usually by State-affiliated actors.
- 29% of incidents sought to acquire military technology.
- 54% of incidents sought to acquire commercial technologies.
- 17% of incidents sought to acquire information on U.S. civilian agencies or politicians.
All you have to do is look, and you will find suspicious activities by China here in the US.
I think that in view of the activities over the years a close eye needs to be kept on all foreign nationals in the US.
And owning land in the country, or next to military base, or next to major infrastructure facilities, is a dangerous recipe.
What are your thoughts?