China Forced to Give Up Land Owned in US

[Domingo the Avenger]

Arkansas has become the first state to order that a Chinese company
give up ownership of local land, amid fears of attempts by Beijing
to malignly infiltrate and influence the U.S. through various means.

On Tuesday, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that she was
ordering Syngenta to relinquish its 160 acres of land holdings in
northeastern Arkansas, accusing its owner of "posing a clear threat
to our state." The Switzerland-headquartered agricultural chemicals
producer was acquired in 2017 by the state-owned China National
Chemical Corporation, and primarily trades in pesticides and seeds.

"Seeds are technology," Sanders said at a press conference. "Chinese
state-owned corporations filter that technology back to their
homeland, stealing American research and telling our enemies how to
target American farms. That is a clear threat to our national
security."

Syngenta has yet to comment publicly on the announcement. Newsweek
approached the company and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
via email for comment on Wednesday.

There have been growing concerns in the U.S. about China's influence
on the economy, with acute focus on the farming industry. In August,
at a roundtable in Dysart, Iowa, hosted by a bipartisan delegation
form Congress, farmers accused the Chinese state of stealing samples
of genetically enhanced seeds—in some cases, straight from the
field—in order to reproduce them back home.
The delegation cited a 2012 case in which a Dysart farmer spotted a
man in business attire digging up hybrid seeds, which were then sent
back to China. Mo Hailong was later arrested by the FBI for stealing
U.S. agriculture trade secrets, and convicted of various crimes
related to the long-term conspiracy in 2016.

The FBI estimates that Chinese intellectual property theft costs the
U.S. economy anywhere between $225 billion and $600 billion a year,
describing the east Asian nation as the world's "principal"
infringer of proprietary knowledge.


Sarah Huckabee Sanders
@SarahHuckabee
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America’s enemies are on the march. They are smart, they are brutal,
and they will stop at nothing to harm our country.

Arkansas is the first state in the country to fight back and kick a
Chinese-owned company off our farmland.

In 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the agency had seen
economic espionage cases linked to China increase by around 1,300
percent.

Sanders noted that Beijing enacted a law in 2017 that compels
Chinese nationals living abroad to cooperate with its intelligence
apparatus. "This is not about where you come from," she said. "We
welcome Chinese Americans."

Official figures show Chinese investment in U.S. land makes up less
than 1 percent of land under foreign ownership.

National security fears were raised earlier this year over a parcel
of land 12 miles from the Grand Forks Air Force base in North
Dakota, held by the Binzhou-headquartered Fufeng Group, where the
company hoped to build a wet corn milling plant. Since then,
questions have been raised about a mysteriously owned company which
has been able to buy land bordering Travis Air Force Base in
California.

There have been several recent legislative efforts to limit Chinese
ownership of U.S. soil. In May, Florida introduced a new law banning
Chinese nationals from buying land within a 5-mile radius of the
state's military installations.

"Other states should follow suit and refuse to let the Chinese
Communists own American land," Republican Senator Tom Cotton of
Arkansas wrote on X, in response to Sanders' announcement.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-forced-to-give-up-land-
owned-in-us/ar-AA1iqJY6