From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By JASON HOPKINS

The United States government is not appropriately addressing the threat posed by growing Chinese ownership of American land, according to a report released by the Heritage Foundation Thursday.

The federal government is woefully ill-equipped to track Chinese-owned real estate in the country, despite the serious threat these Chinese Communist Party-affiliated entities can pose to critical U.S. infrastructure, according to the report. The report calls on federal and state leaders to take action, such as increasing transparency and conducting more critical reviews of land purchases.

“China’s ownership of American land is nontransparent and unscrutinized, and the federal government has failed to address potential threats even as Chinese ownership of U.S. real estate increases,” Bryan Burack, a senior policy advisor for the Heritage Foundation and author of the study, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The federal government lacks an adequate system in place to broadly monitor Chinese ownership of U.S. real estate, due to ownership of real estate being overseen by state and local governments, the report notes. For this reason, the U.S. government has no clear picture on China’s total land holdings in the country.

“The United States should be watching land and real estate transactions from our top adversary, not ignoring them,” Burack said.

The Daily Caller News Foundation has reported extensively on Chinese companies’ land purchases in the U.S. For instance, the parent company of  battery maker Gotion, which plans to build factories in Michigan and Illinois, participated in Chinese Communist Party (CCP) programs that acquire technology for China’s military, the DCNF reported. The DCNF also exposed the CCP ties of companies attempting to set up shop near military bases in Kansas.

Smithfield Foods, America’s largest pork producer, is owned by a Chinese firm and exported massive quantities of pork to its China-based “sister company” as that company stockpiled food for the Chinese military, the DCNF exclusively reported.

Chinese entities have spent over $100 billion acquiring American companies since 2010, with many of these businesses owning real estate across the country, according to the report. In 2020, the National Association of Realtors confirmed that China was the top foreign buyer of American real estate.

The Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) does give some insight into the amount of agricultural land being purchased by foreign entities. The latest AFIDA report indicates that Chinese investors own a relatively small fraction of the country’s privately held agricultural land, holding only 346,915 acres, or roughly one percent, of foreign-held acres of private land, as of December 31, 2022.

However, Chinese-owned agricultural acreage grew over five-fold between 2011 and 2021, the report found.

This trend is worrisome because the Chinese government has made numerous, well-publicized attempts to gain access to key locations within the U.S.

Examples the report highlights include China’s attempt to equip a pagoda with signal collection technology and gift it in Washington, D.C., an attempt by a Chinese billionaire to build a wind development project near Laughlin Air Force Base in Val Verde County, Texas, and an attempt by a Chinese agribusiness to develop a cornmeal project just 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Base.

“In both the Val Verde and Grand Forks cases, existing federal government mechanisms proved manifestly unable to contend with threats that were clearly perceivable to the Americans living nearby — as well as, seemingly, to the Defense Department itself,” the report says. “Frighteningly, China’s threat to U.S. military infrastructure only continues to evolve.”

The Heritage Foundation recommended the federal government and state lawmakers enact laws to better equip the country for this growing threat.

“The threat posed by Chinese entities purchasing real estate in the U.S. and using it for malign purposes is real,” the report concludes. “As China presents the United States’ greatest national security threat and has a history of particular threats to real estate and agricultural land, measures to counter those threats must be a priority.”

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

One villager who refused to relinquish his property reportedly was killed and 47 who wouldn’t leave have been arrested during the building of ‘The Line.’

Saudi Arabian officials have reportedly allowed the use of lethal force against local villagers to clear land to construct the “green” city named ‘The Line’ that is being built in conformity with globalist agenda-linked 2030 green plans with help from Western-based construction firms.

As per a recent BBC report, former Saudi Arabia intelligence officer Col Rabih Alenezi, who is now in exile in the United Kingdom for fear of his security, noted he was given orders to evict villagers from a local tribe to clear land for the ‘The Line’ project.

Reportedly, one person was shot and killed after refusing to leave the area. Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti refused to let a land registry committee value his property and was shot by Saudi authorities one day later, when the clearance mission to evict the villagers was taking place. It was reported that he had posted videos on social media protesting the evictions.

As noted by the BBC, the Saudi state security at the time claimed that al-Huwaiti fired on security and that he was then shot in retaliation. However, human rights groups have said he was killed for refusing to leave the area and comply with eviction orders.

While the BBC noted that it was not able to “independently verify Col Alenezi’s comments about lethal force,” it said a “source” who was familiar with the inner workings of Saudi intelligence told them that Alenezi’s testimony about the clearance mission, as well as the details about it, were accurate in terms of that such clearance missions entail.

Another 47 villagers have been arrested for not going along with evictions, many of them being leveled terrorism-related charges.

Alenezi noted that he does not regret his decision to ignore his clearance orders for the project, saying, “Mohamed Bin Salman will let nothing stand in the way of the building of Neom.”

“I started to become more worried about what I might be asked to do to my own people,” he noted.

‘The Line’ is the flagship “green” project of what is known as Neom, a $1.5 trillion development on the area’s Red Sea. It is being built as part of Saudia Arabia’s 2030 strategy, which looks to move the kingdom’s economy away from oil and its vast reserves.

‘The Line’ is in lockstep with United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes phasing out coal-fired power plants, reducing fertilizer usage, and curbing natural gas use over the coming decades.

The reduction and eventual elimination of the use of so-called “fossil fuels” and a transition to unreliable “green” energy has been pushed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the globalist group behind the socialist “Great Reset” agenda that also promotes population control.

“The Line’ itself is a 170-kilometer-long “car-free” city that is in the northwest of the Gulf country, according to renderings. It will “run into the Red Sea,” where an extension of its structure will serve as a port for ships.

The Neom project is being built by dozens of global construction companies, many of them Western based. According to an analysis conducted by the BBC, satellite images show that three villages’ schools, and hospitals have been demolished to make way for the project.

Future of ‘Dystopian’ project in doubt

‘The Line’ project is being built based on the Saudi Arabian legal system, which is mostly based on Muslim sharia law that criminalizes anyone who “challenges, either directly or indirectly, the religion or justice of the King or Crown Prince. According to Amnesty International, two of 81 men executed by the Saudi Arabian government in 2022 were “convicted of crimes related to their participation in violent anti-government protests.”

When plans for ‘The Line’ were revealed, its promo video noted, “For too long, humanity has existed within dysfunctional and polluted cities that ignore nature. Now, a revolution in civilization is taking place.”

However, the future of the 170-kilometer-long project remains in doubt.

As per a recent Bloomberg report, it appears that only a 2.4-kilometer portion will be completed by 2030, according to a source familiar with the project.

Plans to have 1.5 million residents living in ‘The Line’ will not pan out as planned, sources said, and it is expected there will be less than 300,000 when the project finally comes online.

Some commentators slammed the project as “dystopian,” with one describing it as a “blatant greenwashing PR exercise by the heads of this rotten regime,” pointing out that “it’s an attempted distracting cop-out” since “Saudi Arabia is still at the very bottom for human rights (just pick next to women, any minority).”

Tech blog Engadget has raised concerns that The Line “is expected to be loaded with countless sensors, cameras, and facial recognition technology that in such a confined space could push government surveillance to almost unthinkable levels.”