Whether you’re from South Carolina, Montana or New Hampshire, property owners know that 1-2 acres is no small amount of land. However, as recent news out of Arkansas has been reported, a Chinese-owned company and subsidiary that belongs to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has recently been forced to give up its holdings and ownership on 160 acres of agricultural land located across the state of Arkansas.
As a result of new legislation signed by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-Ark.), it is part of the pro-America movement that is restricting foreign ownership of American property and land ownership within the United States. While some might think that the topic is trivial and another exercise of government overreach, this is something that promotes our national security, keeps our citizens safe and is something that ensures that we consider American sovereignty and interests before all others.
Focusing on our allies while keeping hostile enemies close is a good practice, just not in the way that state governments have been allowing up until recently. Representative Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) is one of many legislators who have claimed that the CCP is an entity and foreign government that is an enemy of the United States. With recent hostile military actions taken against the United States that have put our servicemen and women in peril, Gallagher appeared on CNN to further admit this notion by even saying that he “views the Chinese Communist Party as an enemy of its own people.” This notion in itself shows how the interests of leaders like Xi Jinping are all for the sake of one thing: flexing power and influence.
Thankfully, Sanders’s actions limit this influence. Arkansas’s actions are the first real steps taken, hopefully guiding the direction that recently discussed legislation at the federal level will take. Recently, a Chinese-owned company submitted a bid to purchase land in Grand Forks, N.D., with intentions to operate a mill plant. The plan was only scrapped by the Chinese government after legislators in the state became alarmed by the action as many military bases are located near the proposed site of the mill, and the operation of such a plant is a blatant national security risk. This just goes to show that the CCP is willing to grab as much influence and land in America and will only back down when its hand is caught in the cookie jar.
A recently proposed rule that has been published in the Federal Register amidst the debate over Chinese-owned land would require that the U.S. government would have to approve any land purchase by a foreign entity or firm within 100 miles of any U.S. military base in a number of states. This proposed rule alone vindicates Sanders’s actions as being polarized by any means and displays how she and the great state of Arkansas are promoting the law of the land and keeping our people safe.
With recent severe national security risks, including multiple Chinese spy balloons gathering data and intelligence while hovering above multiple U.S. military sites earlier this year, Governor Sanders’s actions are more than justified. Let’s not forget how President Joe Biden was informed of the national security risks that these balloons carried and was slow to act to promote American sovereignty and safety, with even Biden-sympathizing CNN questioning why they weren’t shot down earlier than they were.
Governor Sanders’s actions are those that clean up where, again, the federal government refuses to. Standing alongside her attorney general at a press conference when the actions were announced, Sanders stated: “Seeds are technology. 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.”
It is clear that the actions being taken by state governments are strong and strictly promote our national security and American interests and are a strong take on the future outlook of our nation concerning our military, government and economy. We need to keep on the path that we are on, or else China will see us as weak and divided, and we will be eaten up as a nation by foreign interests and influence. Our sense of what makes America “America” will be no more, and our house will be further divided.
Michael Duke, GSB ’26, is undecided from Scottsdale, Ariz.
