Fact Check: Chinese Investors Are Buying Farmland Around US Military Bases?

On June 20, 2024, the New York Post published an article titled "Map shows Chinese-owned farmland next to 19 US military bases in 'alarming' threat to national security: experts." The article began as follows:

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 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.

The article then presented a map of the United States titled "Chinese-owned farmland in America" to support its claim. The map highlighted various areas of the country in red. Nineteen points were overlayed on it, labeling the 19 military bases identified by the Post as evidence for its claim.

The map looked like this:

(New York Post)

The idea that investment from Chinese companies in any form could potentially be a "national security threat" is not new, as evident from political bans on products from electronics manufacturer Huawei and the social media platform TikTok , owned by the Chinese corporation ByteDance. A perceived threat from investment in American agriculture and infrastructure isn't new either — a claim from Nikki Haley was fact-checked in 2023, while both independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and republican candidate former President Donald Trump have commented on the topic recently.

But since June 20, 2024, the claim, and the map supposedly supporting it, has spread across the internet in various forms. Snopes readers alerted us to the map's appearance on Fox Business , and to a post spreading across Facebook claiming that "China" owns more than 380,000 acres of farmland across the country.

As a brief reminder before we dive into the meat and potatoes of it all: An acre is an area of land equal to 43,560 square feet. It's a bit smaller than a football field without the end zones.

'China' Owns 380,000 Acres

One of the first things we noticed about the claim is that its language was often reductive, using phrases like "China owns" or "China has been buying up." This wording creates the implication that the Chinese government itself is buying the land. This is not the case: The land is owned by Chinese investors. The government of China does not directly own any land inside the United States.

Critics of this analysis will claim that China does not have private enterprise and therefore any Chinese investment is simply a front for the state as a whole. Exactly how much influence the Chinese government holds over the country's private corporations ( which do exist , by the way) is hard to determine, but we acknowledge that this caveat is not exactly reassuring.

Regardless, the New York Post article claimed that Chinese investors owned 349,442 acres of farmland across the country at the end of 2022, about 30,000 acres less than the number spread in the Facebook claim. The article cites an analysis from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency.

Snopes attempted to find the data that would arrive at either of those numbers.

In 1978, Congress passed the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act . Under that law, foreign investors who "acquire, transfer, or hold an interest in U.S. agricultural land" must report their holdings and transactions to the Agriculture Department. Since 1978, the Farm Service Agency has produced a (roughly) annual report detailing these filings, which is then presented to Congress. These reports are published on the agency's website, along with the raw data used to produce those reports.

Both numbers appeared to come from different versions of the same reports. According to a version of the report tabulating numbers up to the end of 2021, Chinese investors owned 383,935 acres of farmland in the country. This likely explained the origin of the 380,000 acres claim spread across Facebook.

However, the most recent public report provided statistics through the end of 2022. On Page 5 of that report, a section titled "Chinese Investment in U.S. Agricultural Land," gave a different number: "Chinese primary-investor filers reported owning 346,915 acres of agricultural land as of December 31, 2022."

This roughly matched the number printed in the New York Post's article, but Snopes could not determine why there was a 2,527-acre difference between the number in the report and the number published by the New York Post.

However, we can give the New York Post the benefit of the doubt here — the USDA's report noted a caveat in how the land is reported that ends up underrepresenting foreign investment. Under the current laws, land holdings must be recorded and reported by the primary investor. However, if there is a partnership across multiple countries, say, China and Germany, and the USDA is unable to determine which country of the two is the location of the "primary shareholder," the holding is added to the books as "no predominant country." This means, as the report puts it, that "the acreage associated with China — or any other country discussed in this report — should be interpreted as a minimum."

Furthermore, this report only listed holdings at the end of 2022, and some Chinese investors have certainly purchased or sold agricultural land in the U.S. since then. As such, although we are unable to give an exact number, we could estimate that Chinese investors own around 350,000 acres of land across the country.

This brings us to the New York Post's map, which claims to show exactly where that land is located.

The New York Post's Map Is Ineffective and Misleading

The first thing we noticed when looking at the map that it did not have a legend explicitly describing what the red-highlighted areas represented. This is a curious omission, but in this case those areas really couldn't represent anything other than "Chinese-owned farmland." By interpreting the map in this way, a reader could come away believing that "China" (again, titling the map "Farmland owned by Chinese investors" would have been much clearer and more accurate) owns a massive amount of agricultural land in the United States.

Except, a careful look-over revealed that isn't actually true: The areas highlighted in red do not represent "Chinese-owned farmland," they represent the United States counties containing farmland owned by Chinese investors . That is a massive difference. According to reporting from Reuters , the USDA found that the average farm in the United States was 463 acres. Meanwhile, Snopes calculated that the average area of a county in the United States is 719,240 acres.

Highlighting an entire county in an attempt to visualize farmland owned by Chinese investors is like pointing at a haystack and saying "there's a needle in there." In a field like data visualization, where accuracy matters, misleading the audience like this is a cardinal sin. It is never the reader's fault that they interpreted a graphic incorrectly; the blame for that lies on whoever constructed the graphic.

In order to prove what the red highlighting actually signifies, look at Maine, where the unique shape of Penobscot County is plainly visible on the map. Similarly, Hawaii County, Hawaii, the official subdivision of the island of Hawaii, is entirely covered in red, suggesting that Chinese investors own the entire island. Some of the very long and narrow counties on the West Coast, like Riverside and Placer counties in California, or Whatcom County in Washington, also helped to confirm this. Confusing the matter was the red spot near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, which does not match any of the county boundaries in the surrounding area, but we will explain why this area is highlighted later.

Our quest to understand the map was made even more difficult by the fact that the map does not provide a direct source for its data. This was frustrating because our next quest was to create a more accurate visualization using the same data.

Making a Better Map

After more digging, we discovered that the county-level data came from the same place as the total acreage number: the Farm Service Agency's annual foreign landholdings report from 2022.

Toward the end of the data tables in the report is a table titled "U.S. Landholdings by Chinese Investors by Type of Land Use." Investigating the tables revealed how the New York Post likely created its map: The table in question listed every single parcel of land reported by a Chinese investor, organized by state and county. So, the designer presumably took that list of counties, and simply highlighted them.

In order to create our version of the map, we combined the statistics from the Farm Service Agency report with county data from the U.S. Census Bureau and totaled the number of acres of farmland owned by Chinese investors at a county level. This allowed us to directly compare, on a county-by-county basis, the amount of farmland owned by Chinese investors. It ranged from just 1 acre in Russell County, Kansas, owned by an individual farmer, to a massive 132,050 acres in Val Verde County, Texas, where billionaire Sun Guangxin planned to build a large wind farm.

In order to finalize our version, we needed the locations of military bases across the country. Luckily, the Census Bureau, in partnership with the Department of Defense, also maintains a database that contains the boundaries of all U.S. military installations. We were able to overlay those boundaries on top of the county map in order to create the following graphic:

After looking at our map, it became quite clear that if there is any remote chance of espionage at play, it's not being done in a large concerted effort.

We admit that military does seem to be concerned about the security of its facilities in general. In 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported that more than 100 Chinese nationals, sometimes posing as tourists, had accessed U.S. military sites over the course of a year. And of course, there was the supposed Chinese spy balloon tracked across the continent in 2023. (The Pentagon later said it never collected any information, and the Chinese government said it was a weather balloon blown off course.)

But if anyone is buying land near U.S. military bases for the purposes of spying, they're doing so right under the government's nose.

Inside the Treasury Department sits the nine-person Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States ( CFIUS ), formed 1975 by President Gerald Ford to investigate foreign investments in the United States. The committee consists of seven cabinet secretaries (Treasury, Justice, Defense, State, Energy, Commerce and Homeland Security) and the heads of two offices (the U.S. Trade Representative and Science and Technology Policy). These members have the ability to review foreign investments made in the United States and the power to block them based on national security concerns.

CFIUS maintains two lists of military facilities for this purpose: Any transaction within 1 mile of military installations on the first list can be reviewed and rejected by CFIUS, while the second list gives the committee power over any transactions within 100 miles of the facility. This list comes from the Department of Defense, which audits its facilities accordingly. In fact, both CFIUS and the Department of Defense had lengthy discussions with Sun's companies about mitigating any potential security concerns, before signing off on the Texas wind farm project.

State Governments Have Pushed Back

Sun's South Texas wind farm never happened.

In August 2021, Forbes reported on opposition to the project from local residents and state officials. Initially, it was "a mild-mannered campaign to protect a local river," but some activists began arguing that the wind farm could be used to spy on Laughlin Air Force Base, or even destabilize the Texas power grid, which is largely independent from the rest of the country.

The national security argument was the one that picked up steam. Texas lawmakers quickly passed a bill banning individuals and corporations from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran from operating contracts in Texas related to "critical infrastructure," including the electric grid. State legislators explicitly said they were attempting to block Sun from building his wind farm and forcing him to sell his land. The project was stopped in its tracks.

But in Forbes' 2023 follow-up article , documents and emails suggested that Sun had done his best to hold onto the property despite the laws, using a series of canceled contracts and transactions to navigate his way around selling the land. And the story isn't over yet — in an article published July 9, 2024, Sun announced he was suing the Energy Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state's electric grid, because he believed the laws restricting him from owning land were unconstitutional.

Given that the most recent data we could obtain was from 2022, Sun's land still appears on our map. Given the nebulous transaction history over the past year, we were unable to definitively determine whether Sun still owns the land. All of it is located more than 70 miles from Laughlin Air Force Base, which notably wasn't included on the New York Post's map.

Finally, we can explain the red area near Grand Forks, North Dakota, present on the New York Post's map but absent from our version. Between 2021 and 2023, Grand Forks became a major flashpoint for the discussion when the Chinese company Fufeng Group announced plans to build a $700 million corn processing plant just outside the city. According to CNBC , the Republican governor, Doug Burgum, and the state's two Republican senators, John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer, pushed the federal government to let the project happen. And then, the Air Force stepped in.

Grand Forks Air Force Base, about 12 miles from the proposed site, holds some of the nation's most advanced drones and communications equipment. The Air Force Times reported that memos detailing national security concerns made their way from Air Force officials to North Dakota politicians, who quickly changed their minds and axed the project and proposed investment. The article also noted that Grand Forks is already home to Chinese manufacturing, however, through the city's Cirrus Aircraft factory.

Sources:

"Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA)." National-Content , 17 Oct. 2020, https://fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/economic-and-policy-analysis/afida/index .

Archive, View Author, et al. Exclusive | Chinese-Owned Farmland next to 19 US Military Bases . 20 June 2024, https://nypost.com/2024/06/20/us-news/chinese-owned-farmland-next-to-19-us-military-bases/ .

Archive, View Author, and Get author RSS feed. Chen Tianqiao Is Second-Biggest Foreign Owner of US Land . 9 Jan. 2024, https://nypost.com/2024/01/09/business/chen-tianqiao-is-second-biggest-foreign-owner-of-us-land/ .

Bustillo, Ximena. "China Owns 380,000 Acres of Land in the U.S. Here's Where." NPR , 26 June 2023. NPR , https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184053690/chinese-owned-farmland-united-states .

"CFIUS Overview." U.S. Department of the Treasury , 24 June 2024, https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/international/the-committee-on-foreign-investment-in-the-united-states-cfius/cfius-overview .

"Chinese Company Picks Grand Forks for Manufacturing Plant." AP News , 6 Nov. 2021, https://apnews.com/article/business-north-dakota-grand-forks-fufeng-group-ltd-0c56dbdae6f35b999674b78410463562 .

Chinese Spy Balloon Did Not Collect Information, Says Pentagon . 30 June 2023. www.bbc.com , https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66062562 .

Douglas, Leah, and Leah Douglas. "Number of US Farms Falls and Size Increases, Census Shows." Reuters , 13 Feb. 2024. www.reuters.com , https://www.reuters.com/world/us/number-us-farms-falls-size-increases-census-shows-2024-02-13/ .

Downen, By Robert. "Texas Senators, Facing Criticism, Soften Proposed Ban on Chinese Purchases of Land." The Texas Tribune , 2 Mar. 2023, https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/02/texas-chinese-land-bill/ .

Estep, Mary, et al. Foreign Holdings of U.S. Agricultural Land Through December 31, 2022 . U.S. Department of Agriculture, 31 Dec. 2022, https://www.fsa.usda.gov/Assets/USDA-FSA-Public/usdafiles/EPAS/PDF/2022_afida_annual_report_12_20_23.pdf .

Hyatt, John. "Chinese Billionaire Claims Texas Law Is Unconstitutional." Forbes , https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2024/07/09/chinese-billionaire-claims-texas-law-is-unconstitutional/ . Accessed 12 July 2024.

---. "Exclusive: Inside A Chinese Billionaire's Bizarre Maneuvers To Save His Texas Land." Forbes , https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2023/05/26/exclusive-inside-a-chinese-billionaires-bizarre-maneuvers-to-save-his-texas-land/ . Accessed 12 July 2024.

---. "Why A Secretive Chinese Billionaire Bought 140,000 Acres Of Land In Texas." Forbes , https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2021/08/09/why-a-secretive-chinese-billionaire-bought-140000-acres-of-land-in-texas/ . Accessed 12 July 2024.

Jackson, James K. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) . RL33388, Congressional Research Service, 3 July 2018, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL33388/68 .

Javers, Eamon. "Chinese Company's Purchase of North Dakota Farmland Raises National Security Concerns in Washington." CNBC , 1 July 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/01/chinese-purchase-of-north-dakota-farmland-raises-national-security-concerns-in-washington.html .

Johnson, Renee. Foreign Ownership and Holdings of U.S. Agricultural Land . IF11977 Version 4, Congressional Research Service, 24 Jan. 2023, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11977 .

Kiely, Eugene. "FactChecking Haley's Claim on China, U.S. Farmland and Military Installations." FactCheck.Org , 7 July 2023, https://www.factcheck.org/2023/07/factchecking-haleys-claim-on-china-u-s-farmland-and-military-installations/ .

Lubold, Gordon, et al. "Chinese Gate-Crashers at U.S. Bases Spark Espionage Concerns." Wall Street Journal , 4 Sept. 2023, https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/chinese-gate-crashers-at-u-s-bases-spark-espionage-concerns-cdef8187 .

McGregor, Richard. "How the State Runs Business in China." The Guardian , 25 July 2019. The Guardian , https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business-xi-jinping-communist-party-state-private-enterprise-huawei .

Norman, Greg. "Chinese Company's North Dakota Corn Mill Project Struck down by Grand Forks, Prompting Cheers of 'USA!'" FOXBusiness , 7 Feb. 2023, https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/china-fufeng-north-dakota-corn-mill-project-halted-grand-forks-city-council .

Press, Steve Karnowski, The Associated. "Air Force Opposes Chinese Company's Corn Plant for North Dakota." Air Force Times , 2 Feb. 2023, https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2023/02/02/air-force-opposes-chinese-companys-corn-plant-for-north-dakota/ .

Sabrina Eaton, cleveland com. "Foreign Entities Own 500,000 Acres of Farmland in Ohio. Sherrod Brown Seeks Crackdown on Outside Ownership." Cleveland , 2 Feb. 2024, https://www.cleveland.com/news/2024/02/foreign-entities-own-500000-acres-of-farmland-in-ohio-sherrod-brown-seeks-crackdown-on-outside-ownership.html .

"Texas and Federal Government Seek to Protect U.S. Infrastructure From Disruption by Foreign Adversaries." Jackson Walker , https://www.jw.com/news/insights-texas-lone-star-infrastructure-protection-act/ . Accessed 12 July 2024.

"Texas Drove out Chinese Firm, Not the Wind Farm It Planned." AP News , 15 Mar. 2023, https://apnews.com/article/texas-chinese-wind-farm-green-energy-6cd629303e8870e1942c170ebc52d7bc .

"The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)." U.S. Department of the Treasury , 24 June 2024, https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/international/the-committee-on-foreign-investment-in-the-united-states-cfius .

US Bans Sale of Huawei, ZTE Tech amid Security Fears . 26 Nov. 2022. www.bbc.com , https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63764450 .

Wilke, Claus O. Fundamentals of Data Visualization . clauswilke.com , https://clauswilke.com/dataviz/figure-titles-captions.html#axis-and-legend-titles . Accessed 12 July 2024.

Yorker, The New. "The United States Passed a Ban on TikTok. Why?" The New Yorker , 10 May 2024. www.newyorker.com , https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/the-united-states-passed-a-ban-on-tiktok-why .