China’s slow but sure infiltration of America

As it becomes clearer that China and the US have entered a new Cold War, Beijing’s spy operations have grown more flagrant and provocative. Whether it be flying spy balloons, buying farmland near US military bases or even establishing a secret police station in New York City, China is slowly but surely infiltrating the US.

In February 2023, a US fighter jet shot down a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic. The balloon crossed into US airspace over Alaska in late January before passing through Canada and into Montana. While the balloon was able to transmit information back to Beijing in real time, CNN reports the government doesn’t know exactly what intelligence was gathered. Naturally, China claimed it was just a weather balloon that accidentally sailed into US airspace, however, US officials believe it was spying on military bases.

This episode came just two months before another bold act of Chinese espionage. In April 2023, the FBI arrested two men accused of running a covert Chinese police station in New York City. The secret station, set up in an office building in Chinatown, performed basic services, such as helping Chinese citizens renew their Chinese drivers’ licenses, but it also served to to track and threaten Chinese dissidents living in the US. For example, the station located a pro-democracy advocate living in California. 

It gets worse. The FBI arrested the two men at their homes — Liu Jianwang, sixty-one, of the Bronx, and Chen Jinping, fifty-nine, of Manhattan — who were both US citizens. According to US officials, the two men were not registered as agents of a foreign government. They were acting under the direction of a Chinese government official. When the FBI seized their phones, they found evidence of deleted communication between them and the official.  

Four years prior, in 2020, the Justice Department charged six people with working on behalf of the Chinese government. They were working on a campaign to coerce a New Jersey man  to return to China to face charges. 

If China has reached the point where the country feels confident enough to set up a police station in the middle of New York City and pursue New Jersey residents, they most certainly will not stop there. 

And they haven’t. While China only owns about 1 percent of all foreign-owned land in the US, some large Chinese corporations have purchased large amounts of land in close proximity to some of the US’s most strategically important military bases, raising concerns. Spies can eavesdrop by tapping into fiber optics, cables and other communication pathways that crisscross America, flying drones or using radar and infra-red scanning, posing a direct threat to our national security.

It is also particularly concerning as China may use this evidence to better understand American military strategy and survey America’s actions in other areas of interest, such as current tensions with Taiwan.

Last month, the New York Post identified nineteen bases across the US from Florida to Hawaii in close to proximity to Chinese-owned land. These include Fort Liberty, aka Fort Bragg, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California and MacDill air force base in Tampa, Florida.

Take another example. In 2022, Guanghui Energy, owned by Chinese billionaire Sun Guangxin, purchased 132,000 acres of land near Laughlin Air Force Base in South Texas, making him the second largest landowner in the US in 2022. Sun, a former member of the Chinese military, spent an estimated $110 million to build a wind farm near Laughlin, the Air Force’s largest pilot training base. 

The Fufeng group, a Shandong, China-based company that produces bio-fermentation products such as sweeteners from corn, also purchased 300 acres of land twelve miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota in 2022.

What can be done? The Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States reviewed both cases, ultimately concluding neither investment posed a threat to national security. CFIUS also lacked jurisdiction to stop the investment as the bases were not listed as “sensitive.” Because there is no clear federal ruling against such investments, it’s largely up to states to decide whether they consider these purchases a threat. 

In March, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem signed a bill barring China and five other countries from buying land. In July, Florida also passed a law targeted solely at banning “real property and strategic assets by the People’s Republic of China.” And in 2023, fifteen states passed laws regulating foreign ownership of US land, marking progress in regulating Chinese ownership of farmland. But a consistent federal response is still lacking. 

The overall threat of the CCP is a hybrid one that involves crime, counterintelligence and cybersecurity, as FBI director Christopher Wray put it. It “considers every sector that makes our society run as fair game in its bid to dominate on the world stage, and that its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic and break America’s will to resist,” he added. 

China would never allow Americans to own this much farmland in their country, let alone in such close proximity to their military bases. So why aren’t we paying more attention?