Chinese investors own U.S. land twice the size of NYC, says report

Chinese investors own land in the United States that roughly equals twice the size of New York City, according to a new government report. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) latest report on foreign ownership of American land found that Chinese buyers own 384,235 acres of land in the country. 

The figure is almost twice the size of the footprint of New York City, which measures around 193,700 acres. 

According to the report, 146 Chinese investors own the 366 parcels of land, valued at $2.1 billion. Yet the figure only amounts to less than 1% of foreign-held land in the nation.

The last land purchase by a Chinese investor was made by the Fufeng group, a food manufacturer that purchased around 300 acres of land in North Dakota to “build a wet corn milling and biofermentation plant” in 2022.

The report comes two weeks after the assistant secretary with the Department of the Air Force, Andrew Hunter, sent a letter to North Dakota Senators John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer advising against the Fufueng project. 

“The proposed project presents a significant threat to national security with both near- and long-term risks of significant impacts to our operations in the area,” he wrote in the letter dated January 27.

Hunter added that Fufueng’s land is about 12 miles from the Grand Forks Air Force Base, which is home to sensitive military activities “related to both air and space operations.”

The senators responded by issuing a joint statement encouraging the city to discontinue the project and instead “work together to find an American company to develop the agriculture project.”