With Communist China stepping up its spying against America — including, it seems, by high-altitude balloon — Congress is taking a new look at China’s purchases of American agricultural lands. A bill, the Promoting Agriculture Safeguards and Security Act, which died in the last Congress, is getting a new push by Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.

It is curious as to why the previous Congress had left the legislation for dead — and left American national security so unabashedly exposed. The PASS Act would prevent China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea from investing in or acquiring certain American agricultural businesses and lands, and take other measures to protect America.

It would add the Secretary of Agriculture as a standing member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a Treasury-led taskforce charged with assessing the security implications of foreign investments. It would expand the committee’s jurisdiction over agricultural transactions. It would require the president to report to Congress on any waivers granted.

CFIUS’ role as an ostensible bulwark against malign foreign actors was thrust into the spotlight in December. The committee had then cleared the way for a Chinese agricultural conglomerate, Fufeng Group, to acquire 320 acres in Grand Forks, North Dakota, for the construction of a corn milling and biofermentation plant. The land was a mere 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base — and not all that much further by high-altitude balloon.

Grand Forks is the only base in the Air Force’s Air Mobility command to host unmanned aerial systems. It is also home to the Space Force’s space networking center which, according to Senator Hoeven, is the “backbone for all global U.S. military communications.” The transaction could have given “our greatest adversary easy access to some of the nation’s most sensitive military drone technology,” Congresswoman Stefanik tells this column.

Fufeng’s $700 million plan has since come under review and could yet be rescinded. In any event, it is not the only one, nor is America the only target of Beijing’s shopping spree. Around the world between 2011 and 2020, Beijing acquired 16 million acres devoted to agriculture, forestry, and mining. Most is in Africa and Southeast Asia.

That acreage number dwarfs the combined four million acres held by America, Great Britain, and Japan. In America, Chinese land ownership jumped more than twenty-fold in a decade, to $1.8 billion in 2020 from $81 million in 2010. In 2021 Beijing owned 0.9 percent of all foreign-held American farmland. That’s 0.9 percent too much.

China has not articulated a strategy for these purchases. Yet with just seven percent of the world’s arable land and an economy that has been driven to rely more heavily on food imports — to say nothing of the personal paranoia feigned by President Xi in respect of security — the objective is clear.

In the recent party congress report the word “security” appeared 91 times — up from 55 times in 2017 and 36 times in 2012. The need to “reinforce the foundations for food security on all fronts” echoed throughout, like bells sounding a most piercing alarm.

For Communist China, farmland abroad advances more than the regime’s food security. It also provides Beijing with a strategic foothold in countries that it sees as important to its national strategy — either because of the natural resources that they supply or because undermining them would be to Beijing’s geopolitical advantage.

Proximity to Grand Forks Air Force Base could allow China to surveil signals transmitted to and from sensitive American satellites. It could allow the commissars to monitor signals sent by drones routinely tested at the facility. From Fufeng Group’s property, Beijing could send signals to jam passing satellites or disrupt drone operations.

A transaction that would have seen construction of a Chinese-owned wind farm in Del Rio, Texas, would have given its owners access to the state’s electricity grid — exposing it, and Texas, to sabotage. It would have also put the project within a stone’s throw of Laughlin Air Force Base, the largest pilot training base in the Air Force.

In Beijing’s encroachment of American farmlands there is, too, an element of soft power. It pulls at the threads of communal trust, honesty, and reciprocity. For how might there be trust among neighbors when some boast ties to a foreign adversary — all the more so in respect of Communists?

The repercussions of China’s agricultural acquisitions are many and layered. They challenge national security and, indeed, American society. These are not merely theoretical considerations. Under articles seven and 14 of China’s National Intelligence Law, all Chinese citizens and organizations are required to assist the state in intelligence gathering.

“China will do whatever it takes to secure access to agricultural land across North America,” Congresswoman Stefanik tells this column. “Once they acquire this agricultural land, they will use it to put economic and political pressure on us and our allies. This demonstrates how important it is for America to see our agriculture sector as critical to national security and implement the safeguards that this entails.”

The PASS Act would be one such safeguard. By expanding CFIUS’ jurisdiction to include agricultural transactions, it would remedy a vulnerability in American national security. It would be a necessary and overdue step toward securing American agriculture, infrastructure, and communities. Congress must act — lest China continues to.