By J. David Goodman
Feb. 7, 2023Updated 6:02 a.m. ET
HOUSTON — After a Chinese billionaire with plans to create a wind farm bought up more than 130,000 acres of Texas land, some of it near a U.S. Air Force base, the state responded with a ban on such infrastructure projects by those with direct ties to China.
Now, a Republican state senator is proposing to broaden the ban, seeking to stop Chinese citizens and companies from buying land, homes or any other real estate in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott announced his support last month: “I will sign it,” he wrote without equivocation on Twitter.
His endorsement underscored just how important foreign land ownership, particularly by Chinese buyers, has become as a political issue, not just in Texas but across the country.
Tensions have been rising between the United States and China over a range of issues, including international trade, recognition of Taiwan and the war in Ukraine. On Friday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken abruptly canceled a planned weekend trip to China — the first by a U.S. secretary of state since 2018 — after the discovery of what U.S. officials described as a Chinese surveillance balloon drifting over the American heartland. (On Saturday, a U.S. fighter jet shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina.)
The geopolitical strain has fueled calls for a more aggressive approach to Chinese investments in the United States with an eye on security.
“We don’t want to have holdings by hostile nations,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said in a news conference last month. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia made it part of his State of the Commonwealth speech soon after, urging lawmakers in his state to prevent “dangerous foreign entities” tied to the Chinese government from purchasing farmland.
Chinese owners have very slowly expanded their holdings in U.S. agricultural land in recent decades, but the increasingly hostile political climate has made the topic a rising concern, with at least 11 states considering some form of new legislation related to foreign ownership of farmland or real estate, according the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Some of the new and proposed laws go beyond targeting Chinese nationals to broadly take aim at ownership by all foreign governments, businesses and new immigrants. Other laws, like the one under consideration in Texas, single out countries seen as particular security threats, including Russia, Iran and North Korea, in addition to China.