Virginia Gov. Youngkin rings death knell on CCP buying American land near military sites
Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he”ll sign a bipartisan bill that will block the Chinese Communist Party from buying farmland in the state, including near military installations such as Quantico and the Pentagon.
‘China has one goal: world domination,’ Youngkin told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on ‘Sunday Morning Futures.’ ‘To do it at the expense of the United States, they’re using every avenue possible from saber-rattling with their military to surveillance with balloons and TikTok. And from trying to infiltrate our economic supply chain by using Trojan horse relationships like the one they have engineered with Ford Motor Co.’
Youngkin said that in Virginia, he and state lawmakers are ‘standing up strong’ to the CCP.
‘We’re going to make sure that our agricultural farmland is not purchased by the CCP,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a bill now through on a bipartisan basis, that I will sign, that will keep China from buying our agricultural farmland. Particularly next to our nationally strategic assets like the Pentagon and Quantico and the largest naval base in the world.’
This month, Virginia lawmakers passed a bill to ban the sale of agricultural land to ‘foreign adversaries,’ which is aimed specifically at China. Recent U.S. Department of Agriculture records show Chinese companies or private citizens own about 14,000 acres of Virginia farmland, VPM reported.
A sponsor of the bill, Republican state Sen. Richard Stuart, said foreign adversaries own about 1.6 million acres of farmland across the country, the outlet reported.
Youngkin added that he is also working to ‘fully understand what was going on between Ford and a’ Chinese supplier named CATL. Ford announced this month it is moving forward with a collaboration with CATL to build a $3.5 billion battery plant for electric cars in Michigan.
‘We went to work to fully understand what was going on between Ford and a company called CATL, that is not just influenced but controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and to not allow them to use a Trojan horse structure to gain access to taxpayer incentives that were put into the inflation Reduction Act. This is using taxpayer money to further and enrich a Chinese company at the expense of America,’ Youngkin said.