Chinese Communist Party billionaire secretly purchased 200K acres of US land a decade ago, sparking bipartisan outrage
NY Post
This week’s revelation that a Chinese billionaire and member of its Communist Party is the second-largest foreign owner of farmland in the US sparked outrage among politicians, who want to know why Chen Tianqiao’s $85 million purchase was a secret for nearly a decade.
Chen, a co-founder of Shanda Interactive Entertainment, bought nearly 200,000 acres of farmland in Oregon in 2015 at about $430 an acre, according to the Land Report, a magazine that focuses on private land ownership in the US.
However, his purchase of the acreage does not appear in government records of land ownership by foreign investors, the Daily Mail reported Saturday.
New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik told The Post Saturday that the Biden administration had “dropped the ball” on protecting US agricultural land from being snapped up by “foreign adversaries.”
“Communist China is purchasing US agricultural land to subvert our sovereignty, undermine our agriculture industry, encroach on our military installations, and upend America’s rural communities,” Stefanik said.
Chen’s land ownership only came to light this week after the state publicly named one of his companies as the beneficial owner of the property, the Daily Caller first reported.
