Indo-Pacific News – Geo-Politics & Defense
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Map shows #Chinese owned farmland next to 19 US military bases in ‘alarming’ threat to national security: experts
https://www.wkar.org/2023-06-26/china-owns-380-000-acres-of-land-in-the-u-s-heres-where
https://americanmind.org/memo/this-land-is-beijings-land/
June 26, 2023 – In 2021, a Chinese company bought land near an Air Force base in Grand Forks, N.D., sending lawmakers into a frenzy. Lawmakers feared that China, which many policymakers view as a strategic adversary even though it’s the country’s top trading partner outside North America, could gain control …
How Much U.S. Farmland Does China Really Own?
China has been buying up strategically placed farmland next to military installations across the US, raising national security fears over potential espionage or even sabotage.
The NY Post has identified 19 bases across the US from Florida to Hawaii which are in close proximity to land bought up by Chinese entities and could be exploited by spies working for the communist nation.
They 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.
Robert S. Spalding III, a retired United States Air Force brigadier general whose work focuses US-China relations told The Post: “It is concerning due to the proximity to strategic locations.
“These locations can be used to set up intelligence collection sites and the owners can be influential in local politics as we have seen in the past,” he added.
“It is alarming we do not have laws on the books that would prevent the Chinese from buying property in the US.”
Under the guise of farming, the Chinese landowners could set up reconnaissance sights, install tracking technology, use radar and infra-red scanning to view bases or attempt to fly drones over them as ways to surveil military sites, sources told The Post.
A report in the Wall Street Journal from September 2023 found Chinese intruders attempted to breach military facilities over 100 times in recent years, including sneaking onto a missile range in New Mexico and scuba divers spotted near a government rocket-launch site in Florida.