State alien land laws drive some China-born US citizens to rethink their politics

Diana Xue has always followed the politics of her husband, friends and neighbors in Orlando, Florida, and voted Republican.

This Election Day, she’ll break that pattern.

When Florida’s GOP-dominated Legislature and Republican governor enacted a law last year banning Chinese nationals without permanent U.S. residency from buying property or land, Xue, who became a U.S. citizen about a decade after coming from China for college, had an “awakening.” She felt then that the Sunshine State had, more or less, legalized discrimination against Chinese people.

Florida has proved reliably Republican in recent years, but Xue said, “Because of this law, I will start to help out, flip every seat I can.”

At least two dozen states have passed or proposed “alien land laws” targeting Chinese nationals and companies from purchasing property or land because of China’s status as a foreign adversary. Other countries are mentioned, but experts say China is the constant focus in political discussions.

Mostly Republican legislators have pushed the land laws amid growing fears of intelligence and economic threats from China. At the time of the Florida law’s signing, Gov. Ron DeSantis called China the “greatest geopolitical threat” to the U.S. and said the law was taking a stand against the Chinese Communist Party.

Some China-born people with American citizenship are now feeling alienated by the laws to the point that they are leaning Democratic. Many are afraid of being treated wrongly because of their ethnicity.

U.S.-China tensions hit a fever pitch in February 2023 after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was spotted over Montana. Shortly after, GOP-leaning states like Missouri, Texas and Tennessee introduced similar land ownership measures.

The measures all involved restrictions on businesses or people from China and other foreign adversaries, including not buying land within a certain distance from military installations or “critical infrastructure.” Under some of the laws, very narrow exceptions were made for non-tourist visa holders and people who have been granted asylum.

The National Agricultural Law Center now estimates 24 states ban or limit foreigners without residency and foreign businesses or governments from owning private farmland. Interest in farmland ownership restrictions emerged after a Chinese billionaire bought more than 130,000 acres (52,600 hectares) near a U.S. Air Force base in Texas, and Chinese company Fufeng Group sought to build a corn plant near an Air Force base on 300 acres (120 hectares) in North Dakota.

Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, raised concerns that such laws not only counter market economy principles and international trade rules, but “further fuel hostility towards the Asian and Chinese community in the U.S., intensify racial discrimination, and seriously undermine the values that the U.S. claims to hold.”

State laws banning Chinese nationals from owning land discourage Chinese investors and spook other foreign investors who would otherwise help the U.S. to rebuild its industrial base, said John Ling, who has worked for decades to attract international, especially Chinese, manufacturing projects to the U.S.

The laws have also thrown off real estate agents and brokers. Angela Hsu, a commercial real estate attorney in Atlanta, said it’s been confusing to navigate a law Georgia’s governor signed in April restricting land sales to some Chinese citizens.

“The brokers I’ve talked to, they’re just trying to figure out what they can do safely,” Hsu said.

On the federal level, the House in September approved a bill that would flag as “reportable” farmland sales involving citizens from China, North Korea, Russia and Iran. The odds for it to win approval from the Senate, however, are slim.

China “has been quietly purchasing American agricultural land at an alarming rate, and this bill is a crucial step towards reversing that trend,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Washington state.

Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, of California, joined multiple Asian American organizations in opposing the bill, arguing its “broad-brush approach” of targeting people from specific countries amounted to racial profiling.

China owns less than 1% of total foreign-owned farmland in the U.S., far behind Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, the U.K., Germany or Portugal.

After Florida’s land law was signed in May 2023, four Chinese nationals filed a lawsuit. In April, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing them asked a federal appeals court to block it.

The saga sparked the Chinese diaspora in Florida to mobilize. Some formed the Florida Asian American Justice Alliance. Among them was Xue. She became interested studying the Legislature and lobbying. She found that only Democrats like state Rep. Anna Eskamani, who is Iranian American, agreed the law was xenophobic.

“She said, ‘This is discrimination. I’ll stand with you, and I’ll fight with you,'” Xue said.

Hua Wang, board chair of another civic engagement group, United Chinese Americans, said more people are becoming aware that these laws are directly “affecting each one of us.”

“There are people in both Texas and Florida who say for the first time they are becoming interested and they become organized,” Wang said.

Land laws passed in the name of national security echo a pattern from World War II, when the U.S. saw Japanese people as threats, said Chris Suh, a professor of Asian American history at Emory University. It’s difficult to argue the laws are unconstitutional if on paper they are citizenship-based and other countries are named, Suh said.

Anti-Chinese sentiment has shaped policies going back over 150 years. Among these was the Page Act of 1875, which strategically limited the entry of Chinese women to the U.S., and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first broad race-based immigration law.

Policies targeting foreigners hurt the bottom line of all Americans, Suh said, noting that excluding Chinese laborers from railroad work or Japanese immigrants from buying homes didn’t benefit U.S. railroad tycoons and landowners.

“That’s something to keep in today’s context as well,” Suh said. “One of the key allies of the the people who are trying to overturn the alien land law in Florida are the people who are going to lose money if they lose the potential buyers of their land.”

The law makes Chinese immigrants who achieved citizenship worry about things like racism or accusations of being a spy in their own home, Xue said.

“You think it’s nothing to do with you, but people look at you — how you look, how your last name is,” Xue said. “They are not going to ask you are you a U.S. citizen or not.”

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Terry Tang reported from Phoenix. Didi Tang reported from Washington.