Bans on Chinese buying land badges of dishonor

This is an editorial from China Daily.

In a report published on Saturday, NBC News asked "Is China really buying up US farmland?"

Citing fears that Chinese entities are creating a national security risk by buying swathes of US farmland, some of which is supposedly near sensitive sites, State and federal lawmakers in the United States are pushing to regulate foreign ownership of US land.

Yet after reviewing thousands of documents filed with the US Department of Agriculture, NBC News found that very few agricultural land purchases were by Chinese buyers in the past year and a half — "fewer than 1,400 acres (566.55 hectares) in a country with 1.3 billion acres of agricultural land".

And it pointed out that the total amount of US agricultural land owned by Chinese interests is less than three-hundredths of 1 percent.

According to the National Agricultural Law Center, the states of Florida, Virginia, North Dakota, Montana and Arkansas are stepping up efforts to prevent foreign purchases of US agricultural land, and more than 20 states are considering similar measures. There is also a bill in the US Congress that seeks to "federalize" the issue.

Claiming that the state was "taking action to stand against the United States' greatest geopolitical threat", Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for instance, signed a series of bills in May banning Chinese nationals from buying land in the state unless they are also US citizens or permanent residents.

After the bill was passed, some Chinese citizens living in Florida sued the state to overturn the ban. However, on Aug 17, a US District Judge ruled against the plaintiffs on the grounds that since it was "based on citizenship, not race or national origin", the ban did not constitute discrimination and did not violate the US Constitution.

The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association begged to differ with that decision, calling the Florida law a "textbook example of unfair discrimination". Such land purchase bans reveal how deep the cancer of "Sinophobia" has infected US lawmakers. Canadians have bought 30 times more land than Chinese, yet no US lawmaker has proposed a ban on land purchases by Canadians.

The ban on Chinese buying lands is both a joke and a tragedy. In seeking to erect high walls around plots of land like castellated enclosures of old, the US lawmakers are showing the extent to which they have been emboldened to demonstrate their racial prejudices as badges of honor.