(DailyVantage.com) – Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill May 8 that bars Chinese nationals from land purchases, but this does not apply to U.S. citizens from China, and it does not apply to legal permanent residents from China.
DeSantis said Florida doesn’t want the Chinese Communist Party in the state, which he said he will maintain as the “free state of Florida.”
DeSantis is not the only politician concerned about Chinese interests buying American farmland, and Florida is not the only state that sees this as a problem. In March, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced a federal bill that would ban all Chinese foreign nationals from buying any land in the U.S. Cotton’s bill goes farther than other federal legislation that would only stop such Chinese interests from buying agricultural land.
Florida’s DeSantis said he’s worried about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) buying farmland in the U.S. He said “food security is national security,” and the U.S. should not tolerate the CCP having anything to do with food production in the United States.
Before the Florida bill became law, many Chinese-Americans testified against it. Their concerns seemed to be a replay of the distortion surrounding an earlier Florida bill. That bill, now law, bars Florida public schools from instructing children in gender identity issues from kindergarten through 3rd grade. Opponents inaccurately called it the “don’t say gay bill”, and claimed falsely that it was an attack on free speech and marginalized people.
Similarly, the Chinese-American opponents of the Florida land bill said they feared “discrimination”, but it was not clear if all opponents understood that the bill does not apply to American citizens who happen to come from China originally.
Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that China owned more than 352,000 acres of land in America in 2020. This comprises 1 percent of all foreign-owned U.S. land.
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