Land Controversy Over Chinese Owner

OMAHA (DTN) -- Adding fuel to the fire over accounting for foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land, a Chinese billionaire has owned 198,000 acres of timber in Oregon for nearly nine years without reporting those ownership details to USDA as law requires.

Chinese gaming-industry billionaire Tianqiao Chen has owned the forest since 2015 but the specifics of his ownership were not reported until earlier in January when the Land Report listed him as a newcomer to the magazine's "Top 100" individual landowners report. Tianqiao's acreage in Oregon makes him the second-largest individual foreign owner of farm or forest land in the country, second to a Canadian family.

While the Land Report tracked down Tianqiao's ownership going back to February 2015, officials at USDA were not aware of it until staff saw a publication of Oregon's 2023 tax records. Tianqiao was not listed in USDA's latest report on Foreign Holdings of U.S. Agricultural Land released in December. That dovetails into the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report earlier this month that stated USDA does not know the full extent of foreign ownership of farm ground and has an arcane process for trying to keep track of the data.

SENATE BILL

Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, on a call Wednesday announced the introduction of a bipartisan Senate bill to shed more light on foreign ownership of land. He specifically pointed to Tianqiao's ownership of timberland. "We didn't even know about it," Brown said.

Brown said a Chinese billionaire buying nearly 200,000 acres of "farmland" is a national security concern. "It's not a leap that it helps the Chinese national interest and undermines ours," he said.

Brown also added, "We cannot allow foreign adversaries to buy up farmland in Ohio and around the country. It's a threat to our food. It's a threat to our national security. It's a threat to our rural economies and our way of life."

The Senate bill would modernize the authority and resources for USDA under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA). That law is the basis for USDA's annual report and requires foreign people who acquire agricultural land to report transactions within 90 days of taking ownership. The bill would require USDA to create a database of foreign purchases and implement an online system for companies or individuals to file their reports on purchasing land. The bill also would direct USDA to better identify people who have not filed ownership reports and broaden reporting requirements to include foreign persons with a minority stake.

"Farmers tell me they can't really get a handle on the extent of this problem because foreign purchasers can easily conceal their identities," Brown said, pointing to the "alarming gaps" in reporting cited by the GAO.

Foreign ownership of farm ground has increasingly become a bipartisan focus nationally as both Congress and nearly 40 states nationally have introduced or passed bills focusing heavily on China, as well as Russia, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela as adversaries of the United States. Chinese land ownership became a hot topic after a Chinese company attempted to build a corn mill near the Grand Forks, North Dakota, Air Force Base two years ago. The Chinese spy balloon incident last year also heightened concerns.

The U.S. House and Senate each passed separate bills last year that would block the Chinese government or agents from the Chinese Communist Party from buying farmland. The Senate bill also blocked Chinese companies from buying U.S. food companies as well.

Brown's new bill on foreign ownership disclosure has at least 23 cosponsors, including seven members of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Brown told DTN they would likely see the foreign-ownership bill as language added to the update of the farm bill this year.

LAND REPORT DETAILS

The Land Report came out earlier this month with its Top 100 landowners in the country. Surprisingly, the report included Tianqiao for the first time, detailing the extent of his 198,000 acres of forestland in southern Oregon. Tianqiao's holdings make him the second-largest foreign owner of U.S. land behind only a Canadian family that owns timberland in Maine.

The land is listed under Shanda Asset Management LLC, a Chinese real-estate company. The Land Report also stated Tianqiao owns roughly 500,000 acres of timberland in Ontario, Canada.

In a news release, Tianqiao said his company never hid its purchase, though in February 2015, the land was purchased under the name Whitefish Cascade Forest Resources LLC. Tianqiao's news release stated his company had its timberland buy reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) and the committee found no national security concerns.

MISSING DATA

Still, Tianqiao's land holdings do not appear on USDA's foreign land holdings report, which comes out once a year. That report, released in December, listed Brazos Highland Properties and Murphy Brown LLC as the top Chinese-owned companies with 102,345 acres and 97,975 acres, respectively. The USDA report also listed Texas, with 162,417 acres, as the state with the largest Chinese holdings.

AFIDA requires foreign persons or companies to disclose their ownership to USDA within 90 days or face a civil penalty of up to 25% of the fair market value of the interest held in the land in question, USDA states.

A USDA spokesperson responded to DTN that the department became aware of Tianqiao's land holdings through the publication of Oregon's 2023 tax records and subsequent reporting, "and we are taking steps within the bounds of our limited authority to learn more about the underlying transaction and take relevant enforcement steps."

The spokesperson added that the department supports Congress wanting to update the AFIDA law but that also requires funding for USDA to implement those changes. In the GAO report, USDA officials stated it would take about $25 million to create a database and add electronic filing capabilities and better monitor foreign purchases.

"It's good to see Congress recognize that, as we've said, any significant changes to the AFIDA process require legislative action," the spokesperson stated. "Congress must also understand that, in order for USDA to implement many of these changes, additional funding is needed."

FOREIGN OWNERSHIP DETAILS

USDA's latest report -- now considered incomplete -- shows foreign investors acquired more than 3.4 million acres of land in 2022, and now hold interest in more than 43.4 million acres of agricultural land, which is considered both forests and farm ground. That equates to about 3.4% of all privately held agricultural land in the U.S.

Since 2017, foreign land holdings in the U.S. have increased between 2.4 million acres and more than 3.4 million acres annually. In the five years before 2017, foreign land acquisitions averaged around 600,000 acres per year.

Timber or forestland makes up nearly 21 million acres, or 48.3%, of the foreign-interest land, followed by cropland at 12.28 million acres, or 28.3%, and pasture at 9.2 million acres, or 21.3%.

The USDA report had pegged Chinese ownership of agricultural land at 349,442 acres, which doesn't account for Tianqiao's acreage.

USDA's Foreign Holdings report: https://www.fsa.usda.gov/…

Also see, "The Simmering Debate Over How to Handle Foreign Ownership of Ag Land," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com.

Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @ChrisClaytonDTN.

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