Loopholes Allow China to Buy Land Near Sensitive Areas

(Dreamstime)

China is still allowed to purchase U.S. land near sensitive Coast Guard facilities, ports, and Energy Department labs, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Two Republican lawmakers, Reps. Greg Murphy, N.C. and John Moolenaar, Mich., have expressed concern that China and other foreign adversaries are allowed to purchase land near “national laboratories, maritime ports, and critical telecommunications and energy infrastructure.”

The Treasury Department’s Committee of Foreign Investment in the United States reviews real estate transactions to foreign entities near 50 military and other sensitive sites, the Free Beacon said.

“Coast Guard facilities, Department of Energy National Labs, among other locations, remain off CFIUS’s list of sensitive sites and are thereby vulnerable to foreign adversary exploitation,” Murphy and Moolenaar, who chairs the House Select Committee on China, wrote in a Monday letter to the Treasury Department.

The lawmakers say this reflects “significant gaps in our national security screening regime for land purchases near national security sites.”

“These loopholes must be closed, and closed quickly,” the lawmakers said. “Allowing our adversaries to have potential access to these sites poses risks to both our economic and national security, especially as we see companies with ties to hostile nations continue to increase their investments in the U.S.”

Companies tied to the Chinese Communist Party own at least 384,000 acres of American agricultural land, $2 billion in holdings, a 30% increase since 2019, the Free-Beacon reported.

“Because CFIUS land purchase regulations are not retroactive, land purchases made prior to a site being listed are exempt from CFIUS review,” the lawmakers said.

Moolenaar told the Free Beacon that Xi Jinping would never allow Americans to buy land next to sensitive Chinese bases.

“Unfortunately, current U.S. policy all too often rolls out the red carpet for CCP land purchases,” Moolenaar said.

Murphy and Moolenaar said there is a “national security case for including Coast Guard and other facilities” in CFIUS’ blacklist, given the Coast Guard’s chief role in policing America’s maritime boundaries, the Free Beacon reported.