Chinese companies and Chinese nationals have been buying farmland across the United States, disproportionately located in the vicinity of major military installations. This includes land located near Fort Liberty in Fayetteville, North Carolina (formerly Fort Bragg). The New York Post, in an article analyzing the security threat posed by these purchases, noted that Fort Liberty is “surrounded by Chinese-owned farmland within a 30-mile radius.”
Fort Liberty is the largest military base in the United States in terms of personnel and is home to several U.S. Airborne and special operations units, including the storied 82nd Airborne Division. The base also contains two major airfields that are used for global airlift operations and would be central for coordinating the deployment of troops in a potential major conflict. Fort Liberty is also home to U.S. Army Special Operations Command and Army Reserve Command, among others.
Despite the sensitive nature of Fort Liberty, the U.S. government has stood by while companies from the People’s Republic of China have purchased large tracts of land in the base’s immediate vicinity. Chinese ownership of U.S. land has increased by 550% over the past decade, with China having owned no land at all in North Carolina before 2010.
Today, Chinese companies own nearly 50,000 acres of farmland in North Carolina across 28 of the state’s 100 counties. In fact, North Carolina accounts for 13% of Chinese-owned farmland in the United States. Much of this farmland is located near Fort Liberty.
The presence of this PRC-owned land near Fort Liberty poses a national security risk. The New York Post noted that the land could be used by Chinese agents, under the cover of farming, to “set up reconnaissance [sites], install tracking technology, use radar and infra-red scanning to view bases or attempt to fly drones over them as ways to surveil military sites.”
Chinese agents could also watch for patterns in U.S. troop movements at the base, noting shifts in those movements to anticipate U.S. deployments or see how the U.S. would respond to major international incidents. These concerns about Chinese espionage are already borne out by real-world examples, as there have been many incidents in recent years of Chinese “tourists” entering restricted military sites and attempting to take pictures and videos.
Some counter that the farmland is owned by Chinese companies and not by the Chinese government itself and is therefore not a national security risk. This reasoning is severely flawed. China does not have independent private enterprise in the manner of Western free-market nations. Instead, the Chinese Communist government maintains influence over all companies headquartered in China, meaning that any investments by these companies has the tacit approval (or even guidance) of the government.
The United States cannot continue to ignore that Chinese entities are gaining ownership over land that is in prime position to be used for espionage against our military. The next administration must do more to ensure that Fort Liberty and other installations are protected from this sort of malign foreign influence, perhaps by prohibiting companies tied to the Chinese government from purchasing land within 100 miles of military facilities. The security of our men and women in uniform, of the communities around our military installations in places like Fayetteville, and of our nation as a whole must come first.