New Texas Law Prevents Land Sales To CCP Members

Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Texas will ban individuals and companies with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from purchasing land in the state under a law set to take effect on Sept. 1.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks with the Jewish Republican Coalition in Las Vegas, Nev., on Sept. 5, 2024. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Gov. Greg Abbott announced on June 23 that he signed Senate Bill 17 into law, restricting the foreign ownership of residential property, agricultural land, mineral deposits, and water rights across Texas.

The legislation targets nations designated as national security threats by the Director of National Intelligence. Besides communist China, the current list includes Russia, Iran, and North Korea. It also grants the governor the authority to add more countries to the restricted list.

With the new law, Texas is joining a growing number of states that regulate foreign ownership of their land. From January 2023 to July 2024, a total of 22 states have enacted similar laws limiting or banning foreign ownership of land, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service released in August 2024.

State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, who reintroduced SB 17 earlier in 2024, hailed the Texas measures as “the strongest national security bill that this nation has ever seen from any state.”

“I believe that, from the very bottom of my heart, we are protecting our land and our minerals,” the Republican senator said at a press conference on May 31 following the bill’s passage in the Texas Legislature.

“All of these are our resources that should never fall into the hands of adversarial nations.”

In November 2022, Kolkhorst first introduced the bill, which was killed in the state’s lower chamber at the time.

Under the soon-to-be-enacted law, people from the designated nations living in the United States legally are allowed to purchase residential property but only if those properties serve as their primary residences.

It restricts members of “the ruling political party or any subdivision of the ruling political party” in these nations from purchasing the state’s property. That means CCP members, for example, would not be able to buy land in Texas.

Individuals who act “as an agent or on behalf of a designated country” are also subject to the land purchase ban.

The law prohibits them from acquiring land and limits property leases to less than a year at a time.

The bill passed in the state Senate by a vote of 25–6 on May 30, a day after receiving approval from the House with an 85–57 vote.

Among the four targeted nations—which collectively hold less than 1 percent of total foreign-held agricultural land—investors from China own the most U.S. forest land and farmland at 277,336 acres, according to the Department of Agriculture’s most recent report.

Texas alone has 123,708 of those acres, making it the state with the largest Chinese holdings. It was followed by North Carolina with 44,263 acres and Missouri with 42,905 acres.

Nationwide, Iranian and Russian investors reported owning 3,030 acres and 11 acres, respectively, while there was no reported acreage held by North Koreans, according to the report released in December 2023.

State Rep. Cole Hefner, a Republican who carried SB 17 in the House, said that the new law will “prevent hostile foreign nations from buying up Texas land and exposing Texas to a significant and growing threat.”

“We cannot, we will not, allow oppressive regimes who actively seek to do us harm to seize control and dictate their terms over our economy, our supply chains, our daily lives, our critical infrastructure, or our food supply,” Hefner said at the May 31 press conference.

State Sen. Bryan Hughes told reporters that the bill was not about foreign people but was part of Texas’s efforts to stand up against threats from hostile foreign adversaries.

He pointed to the threats posed by transnational repression, saying that agents from foreign adversaries operate in Texas, going after dissidents and Americans who speak out against them.

“We love all people,” Hughes said. “We do not support hostile foreign governments that are very open about their designs on us, and we will not let them mess with Texas.”