Protect Texas Land, Government, and Elections from Communist China’s Surveillance and Sabotage

Testimony:

Good afternoon, Chairman Hefner and Members of the Select Committee. Thank you very much for allowing me to testify today.

My name is Adam Savit, and I am the director of the China Policy Initiative at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI).

At AFPI, we believe that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) poses a comprehensive threat to U.S. national security. The path to American success lies in our own economic prosperity, secure supply chains, energy independence, and military deterrence to neutralize this threat while avoiding war. As a guiding principle, America First policy begins with reciprocity—the CCP and anyone tied to it should have no access to any institution or opportunity in America beyond that to which we have access in China. Chief among these is access to property.

These same values inspired state legislators to introduce a wave of bills during the 2023 and 2024 state sessions to prevent the CCP and other adversaries from acquiring agricultural land—understandably so.

The CCP agricultural footprint in the United States is significant. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that Chinese investors’ holdings of U.S. agricultural land surged from 13,720 acres in 2010 to 191,652 acres in 2019—a stunning 1,400 percent increase, representing an estimated $1.8 billion in total value. Between 2019 and 2022, the amount of land owned nearly doubled again to 346,915 acres.

Protecting Texas Military Bases and Critical Infrastructure

One of the most troubling cases involved the farming sector here in Texas. In 2019, Chinese billionaire Sun Guangxin invested an estimated $110 million in farmland near Laughlin Air Force Base along some of its training flight paths. He planned to build a wind turbine farm on a 15,000-acre parcel, which would have given him access to the Texas electricity grid. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) signed off on the proposal in December 2020, and only a combination of state and local action deterred the development of the wind farm.

Then, in 2022, Chinese food manufacturer Fufeng Group bought land near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota—a facility CFIUS failed to include in existing federal regulations as a designated military installation and a transaction over which the CFIUS claimed it had no jurisdiction. Media exposure and local pressure defeated the proposed development, but CFIUS’ unwillingness or inability to act exposed a major gap in land security.

The vital connection between these two incidents was not necessarily that both involved the agricultural sector but the proximity of the land to sensitive national security sites and critical infrastructure. And so, as in many cases when federal safeguards fail in their duty to protect American citizens, it fell to the states, our 50 creative laboratories of democracy, to find a solution.

Throughout 2023 and 2024, AFPI has been educating legislators, governors, and other state policymakers about the CCP threat to military bases and critical infrastructure installations in their states, and many states have taken action. Crucial to these measures have been designated proximity bans to deny CCP agents the ability to sabotage or surveil these protected properties. In 2024, such measures included:

• The governor of Missouri enacted an executive order banning individuals and businesses from adversary nations (including China) from purchasing agricultural land within 10 miles of a military base in the state.
• Indiana passed a law prohibiting foreign adversaries from buying agricultural land and any real property within a 10-mile radius of a military installation, effectively blocking a purchase by CCP’s Fufeng Group, the same corporation that was pushed out of North Dakota.
• The Ohio Senate passed the Ohio Property Protection Act, which would have prohibited foreign adversaries from owning “protected property,” defined as agricultural land or real property located within 25 miles of installations under the jurisdiction of the armed forces or a critical infrastructure facility.
• The Kansas legislature passed a bill prohibiting foreign principals from countries of concern from holding any real property within 150 miles of a military installation, only to have it vetoed by the governor.

AFPI recommends legislation that precisely targets foreign adversary countries, their citizens and businesses, and their agents or trustees. It is crucial to ensure that American citizens of any background and their businesses are exempt from any such prohibition.

The exact radius of the prohibited area should be determined according to a state’s particular security needs. The above examples range from 10 miles to 150 miles. Given Texas’s large size, the designated proximity would need to be at the high end—or even a total ban on foreign adversaries owning land anywhere in the state.

In early 2023, a CCP spy balloon traversed the entire continental United States. It was a wake-up call for average Americans about the vulnerability of our airspace to Chinese surveillance penetration. If left open to CCP control, our real property would provide nearly limitless bases for “permanent spy balloons” near our most vulnerable installations.

Protecting Our State Capitols from Foreign Influence

Foreign lobbying and advocacy are monitored at the federal level under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA), which was originally written to require disclosure of Nazi influence within German-American organizations in the lead-up to World War II. However, high-profile failures to identify foreign agents in recent years have shown that the federal government is not up to the task of protecting our governors and legislatures from a new onslaught of CCP influence operations:

• In August 2024, Linda Sun, former deputy chief of staff to the governor of New York, was indicted in the Eastern District of New York for violations of FARA. The allegations against her include her acting as an unregistered agent of the PRC for several years despite being warned by the FBI in 2020. This occurred primarily through invitations extended by Sun for PRC representatives to meet with state officials in exchange for payment, as well as intentionally disrupting Taiwanese relations with state officials. Following this revelation, the PRC Consul General in New York City was expelled.
• In 2023, the Associated Press uncovered a massive Chinese lobbying operation in Utah that successfully convinced the state to delay its banning of Confucius Institutes and pass resolutions favorable to China, including statements of “solidarity” with China in the early days of COVID-19. Additional measures, such as condemnations of China’s actions in Xinjiang against Uyghurs, failed after a “hyperlocal” pressure campaign from Chinese-born Utahns.
• Here in Texas, in July 2020, the Chinese consulate in Houston was closed and denounced as a “hub of spying and intellectual property theft” by then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He went on to warn about the CCP using such regional outposts to violate U.S. sovereignty and “influence and undermine our democracy.”

AFPI recently released guidance concerning the implementation of “state-level FARA” legislation that would monitor and report lobbying by foreign governments in the same way that most legislative bodies require the monitoring and reporting of lobbying by domestic business interests. It includes proposed registration requirements for those representing foreign countries, foreign businesses, or other foreign organizations when interacting with the state government or elected officials. Having these powers closer to home would ensure that they are better enforced.

The two necessary features of a state FARA program are (1) a robust reporting system accessible to legislators and the public and (2) allowances for constitutionally protected private activity.

AFPI recommends the following:

1. A public database organized either through the state legislature, the state attorney general’s office, or a state ethics commission, which catalogs the following information about foreign lobbyists:

• Agent’s name and business address;
• Full financial transactions and contracts made with foreign entities that the agent represents; and
• Every lobbying meeting, interaction, or appearance that the agent makes with policymakers, political staff, or any person in government.

2. The following exemptions to protect legal activities:

• No requirements for registration in exclusively private-to-private businesses;
• Consular or diplomatic exemption, as long as the meetings are conducted officially by the consulate or embassy and are of a government official of the foreign interest; and
• Legal representation.

Keeping Foreign Money Out of Texas Ballot Initiatives

AFPI has also recently published model legislation to prevent foreign influence on ballot initiatives. The pillars of this legislation include:

• A prohibition on contributions from non-citizens to political campaigns or campaigns organized on the basis of campaigning for or against ballot initiatives, including:
• A prohibition on purchasing election communications on behalf of such a campaign, even if done independently.
• A promise (implicitly or explicitly) to make contributions or in-kind contributions for such issues.
• A prohibition on the solicitation of foreign donations and, subsequently, knowingly accepting donations from foreign sources to support a ballot initiative.
• Prosecution of the above offenses exclusively by the Office of the State Attorney General.

Even though election issues, especially in the state of Texas, may be prosecuted by county or district attorneys, the prosecution of such issues—especially given their state-wide impact—should be preemptively given explicitly to the state’s attorney general.

Conclusion

The CCP’s malign influences pose a grave threat to many aspects of our civil society, and state government is a crucial venue for confronting that threat. We must empower our states with the tools needed to be successful in this mission and reverse the self-destructive policies that have left us vulnerable for decades. Protecting Texas’ land, government officials, and ballot initiatives must be prioritized if we are to succeed. We aim to decouple ourselves completely from hostile foreign organizations and make CCP policies largely irrelevant to American life.