Reasoning | Demanding "Prohibition of Chinese People Buying Land in the United States": Taking pride in "fear of China" and causing shame in the United States | China | The United States
"Has China really purchased a large amount of farmland in the United States?" Last Saturday, the National Broadcasting Corporation of the United States published a report on this topic, which attracted attention.
This report states that due to concerns that Chinese entities are purchasing a large amount of US farmland, some of which are reportedly located near "sensitive locations" or pose a risk to US "national security," US state and federal lawmakers are currently pushing for relevant legislation to regulate foreign-owned US land.
However, after reviewing thousands of documents submitted to the US Department of Agriculture, NBC discovered a fact: in the past year and a half, Chinese buyers have actually purchased very little US agricultural land, less than 1400 acres, while the total agricultural land area in the United States is as much as 1.3 billion acres.
The report also pointed out that currently, the agricultural land owned by Chinese stakeholders in the United States is actually less than 0.03% of the total agricultural land in the United States.
However, currently, according to the National Agricultural Law Center in the United States, several major states, including Florida, Virginia, North Dakota, Montana, and Arkansas, are taking measures to prohibit foreign investment from purchasing agricultural land in the United States, and more than 20 states are considering similar measures. Even a bill has been submitted to the US Congress, requiring such incidents to be dealt with at the federal level.
Florida Governor Ron de Santis, who has always claimed to be taking action against America's biggest geopolitical threat, signed a series of bills in May this year prohibiting Chinese people from buying land in the state unless they hold both US citizenship and permanent residency.
![Reasoning | Demanding "Prohibition of Chinese People Buying Land in the United States": Taking pride in "fear of China" and causing shame in the United States | China | The United States](https://a5qu.com/upload/images/8733994d1deabdcb8dca46a8af224e02.jpg)
After the bill was passed, some Chinese citizens residing in Florida sued the state, demanding the overturning of the ban. But on August 17th this year, a US district judge dismissed the lawsuit, stating that since the law is based on citizenship rather than race or ethnic origin, it does not constitute discrimination and does not violate the US Constitution.
In response, the American Association of Asian American Lawyers has requested an objection to the ruling, stating that the Florida law is a "textbook style case of unfair discrimination.".
This type of land purchase ban actually reveals how deeply "China phobia" has become in the minds of American legislators - Canadians purchase American land with an area 30 times larger than Chinese people, but no American legislator has proposed to impose any land purchase ban on Canadians.
Implementing a land purchase ban on Chinese people is both a joke and a tragedy. The American legislators who seek to build ancient high walls around one piece of land after another have shown everyone how they are determined to make racial discrimination a "glory" through such actions, which is enough to shame the United States.
This article is translated from the August 27th editorial of China Daily