Diana Xue has always followed the politics of her husband, friends and neighbors in Orlando, Florida and voted Republican.
On this election day, she will break that pattern.
When Florida’s GOP-dominated legislature and Republican governor outlined a law last year that would ban Chinese nationals without enduring U.S. residents from purchasing property or land, Xue, who came to college from China about a decade after arriving in the U.S., had a U.S -Citizen, an “awakening”. She then considered that the Sunshine State had more or less discriminated against the Chinese people.
Florida has proven reliably Republican in recent years, but Xue said, “Because of this law, I’m going to start flipping every seat I can.”
At least two dozen states have adopted or proposed “alien land laws” to target Chinese nationals and companies due to China’s status as a foreign adversary. Other countries are mentioned, but experts say China is the constant focus in policy discussions.
Mostly Republican lawmakers pushed the land legislation. At the time of the bill’s signing in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis called China the “biggest geopolitical threat” to the U.S. and said the bill opposed the Chinese Communist Party.
Some Chinese-born people with American citizenship now feel alienated by the laws to the point of leaning Democratic. Many are afraid of being treated wrongly because of their ethnicity.
US-China tensions reached fever pitch in February 2023 after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was discovered over Montana. Shortly thereafter, GOP establishments such as Missouri, Texas, and Tennessee adopted similar land ownership measures.
The measures included any restrictions on companies or people from China and other foreign adversaries, including the purchase of land within a certain distance of military installations or “critical infrastructure.” Some laws have made very narrow exceptions for non-tourist visa holders and people granted asylum.
The National Agricultural Law Center now estimates 24 states that have nonresident aliens and foreign corporations or governments own private farmland. Interest in farmland restrictions arose after a Chinese billionaire purchased more than 130,000 acres (52,600 hectares) near a U.S. Air Force base in Texas, and Chinese firm Fufeng Group sought to build a corn plant near an air force base on 300 acres to be built (120 hectares) in North Dakota.
Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, expressed concern that such laws would not only counter market economic principles and international trade rules, but would “further fuel the hostility of the Asian and Chinese communities in the United States, intensify and seriously undermine racial discrimination.” The values that the USA claims to uphold are seriously undermined. “
State laws allowing Chinese nationals to own the land discourage Chinese investors and frighten other foreign investors who would otherwise facilitate the U.S. rebuild its industrial base, said John Ling, who has worked for decades to bring international, particularly Chinese, manufacturing projects into the country USA to win
The laws have also thrown off real estate agents and brokers. Angela Hsu, a commercial real estate attorney in Atlanta, said it has been confusing to navigate a Georgia governor’s signature in April restricting land sales for some Chinese nationals.
“The brokers I’ve spoken to are just trying to figure out what they can do safely,” Hsu said.
At the federal level, the House approved a bill in September that would classify “reportable” turnover of farmland involving citizens of China, North Korea, Russia and Iran. However, the chances of it receiving Senate approval are slim.
China “has been quietly buying up American agricultural land at an alarming price, and this bill is a critical step toward reversing that trend,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Washington state.
Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California joined several Asian American organizations in opposing the bill, arguing that their “broad approach” to people from certain countries constituted racial profiling.
China owns less than 1% of all overseas farmland in the United States, far behind Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, Britain, Germany or Portugal.
After Florida’s land law was signed in May 2023, four Chinese nationals filed a lawsuit. In April, an American lawyer for the Civil Liberties union asked a federal appeals court to block him.
The saga sparked Florida’s Chinese diaspora to mobilize. Some formed the Florida Asian American Justice Alliance. Among them was Xue. She was interested in studying legislation and lobbying. She noted that only Democrats like state Rep. Anna Eskamani, who is Iranian American, agreed that the law was xenophobic.
“She said, ‘This is discrimination. I will stand with you and fight with you,'” Xue said.
Hua Wang, chief executive of another civic engagement group, United Chinese Americans, said more people are becoming aware that these laws directly “affect every one of us.”
“There are people in Texas and Florida who are interested and organizing for the first time,” Wang said.
Land laws passed in the name of national security echo a pattern from World War II, when the U.S. viewed the Japanese as threats, said Chris Suh, a professor of Asian American history at Emory University. It’s arduous to argue that the laws are unconstitutional when they are based on paper citizenship and designate other countries, Suh said.
Anti-Chinese sentiment has shaped politics going back over 150 years. Among these were the Side Act of 1875, which strategically restricted the entry of Chinese women into the United States, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first broadly race-based immigration law.
Policies targeting foreigners hurt the bottom line of all Americans, Suh said, noting that with the exception of Chinese workers from railroad work or Japanese immigrants from buying homes, no U.S. railroad tycoons and landowners benefit.
“That’s also in today’s context,” Suh said. buyers of their country. “
The law makes Chinese immigrants who have achieved citizenship worried about things like racism or accusations of being a spy in their own home, Xue said.
“You think it has nothing to do with you, but people look at you – what you look like, what your last name is,” Xue said. “They won’t ask you whether you’re a U.S. citizen or not.”
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Terry Tang reported from Phoenix. Didi Tang reported from Washington.
