Purchases of farmland in the United States by people and companies from China are attracting new attention on Capitol Hill.
Michigan Republican John Moolenaar is the Chair of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. He says he has an eye on an electric vehicle manufacturer’s purchase of land in his state.
“Gotion is a Chinese-based company that it is buying farmland. It is a hundred miles from a National Guard location where a lot of training is done.”
And, Moolenaar says, that’s despite Michigan’s subsidizing a Gotion battery plant on that farmland over local opposition.
“Fortunately, there is a process, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. has jurisdiction over this project. And I hope that they will come back with a report that says, this is not the place for a Chinese-based plant.”
The Treasury-led ‘CFIUS’ looks at national security issues raised by foreign investment and now includes USDA’s Secretary Vilsack as a member. Moolenaar (interviewed on News Nation) says China’s presence here, especially near sensitive U.S. military facilities, is no small matter.
“We’ve seen hundreds of incidents of gate-crashing at military bases from foreign nationals, many of them Chinese.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is working to improve its data collection to study the impact of foreign land holdings on rural communities, as well as the exact location of foreign-owned land.
Comments