Legislation gaining support in the U.S. Senate, the PASS Act, aims to prevent China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran from buying farmland near military bases and other sensitive areas (“Move to ban Chinese farmland purchases near military bases gains steam in Senate,” Fox Business, March 6, 2025).
It would also give the Department of Agriculture the ability to submit cases to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. for review if it believes there is a national security concern and make the Agriculture secretary a voting member of the committee for purchases of agricultural land, biotechnology and any other transaction related to the agriculture industry….
China owned around 350,000 acres of farmland across 27 states as of last year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture….
Chinese companies own nearly 10,000 acres of farmland in Polk, Florida, near MacDill Air Force Base and 277 acres in San Diego County near Camp Pendleton.
So far, congress.gov has not reported on the status of the PASS Act in the 119th Congress. The bill didn’t get very far in the previous session. But it now has the support of the U.S. Senate majority leader.
The unpacked title is the Promoting Agriculture Safeguards and Security Act.
More than 20 states have instituted restrictions or bans on ownership of farmland near military bases by companies with ties to enemy governments, including China. The restrictions on land ownership are complemented by laws to prevent pension funds from investing in China or to prevent public agencies from buying Chinese-made drones.
Performing or performative?
Critics like Mary Gallagher of the Brookings Institution question the value of such efforts. She says that “they seem often much more performative and political” than effective in addressing the problems of surveillance and cyber-compromising of personal information and infrastructure.
Chinese nationals have been caught spying on military bases, suggesting that the Chinese Communist Party is interested in learning about these bases. Do the CCP bosses only wish to expand their horizons? Or do they want to use the knowledge gained to pursue other purposes? Probably not every federal or state barricade against the CCP’s many different kinds of attack and preparation for attack is equally effective. But this is not an argument for reducing the number of barricades.
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: Working Hard or Hardly Working? America’s Unserious Counter-CCP Espionage
