A top Pentagon official broadly backed congressional efforts to restrict land purchases by foreign adversaries, including China, on Thursday.
Assistant Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner told the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party that he “absolutely support[s] efforts to prevent adversarial ownership of sensitive land industries and sectors, and biotechnology is one we're taking a careful look at,” though he hasn’t reviewed the committee’s proposed legislation closely.
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Several officials — Ratner; Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs; and Thea Rozman Kendler, assistant secretary of commerce for export administration — testified in front of the committee on Thursday morning regarding the administration's policy toward China.
Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and more than a dozen other lawmakers of both parties introduced legislation last week to give the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency committee authorized to review investments that raise national security concerns, jurisdiction over all land purchases by foreign entities and require mandatory CFIUS filings for adversarial entities making land purchases near sensitive sites, including all military facilities.
"This is certainly something that we're tracking and paying a great deal of attention to," Rozman Kendler said, though she referred the committee to the Treasury Department for specific details on the plan. "We certainly are eager to work with you and your team on this and better understand the issues facing your constituents and others across the country."
The legislation would authorize CFIUS to consider U.S. food security as a factor in its reviews; provide it with jurisdiction for all cases except for real estate in urban areas and single-house units; raise the approval threshold for these deals; expand the list of sensitive national security sites; and require CFIUS to file on any attempts by adversaries to purchase land near one of those sites.
"The United States cannot allow foreign adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party and its proxies to acquire real estate near sensitive sites like military bases or telecom infrastructure, potentially exploiting our critical technology and endangering our servicemembers," Gallagher said in a statement at the time the bill was introduced.
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The committee, a day before the hearing, sent letters to four U.S. venture capital firms expressing “serious concern” about investments in Chinese tech startups. It has explored a number of different aspects of growing Beijing-Washington tensions, including Chinese military aggression and expansion in the Pacific.
A law in Florida that would prevent Chinese citizens from owning property in the state is continuing through the courts. Four Chinese immigrants and a real estate company that caters to Chinese clients filed a federal lawsuit in May, and the ACLU of Florida has argued that it would discriminate against people of Asian descent in violation of the Constitution and Fair Housing Act.