The local American revolt against the enormous China footprint within the domestic United States continues to gather steam. “The Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature on [April 30] approved a measure that will largely ban companies from China and other foreign adversaries from owning real estate, likely blocking a sprawling facility under construction in Johnson County,” The Kansas City Star reported. “The legislation appears intended to thwart Cnano Technology, a US subsidiary of a Chinese firm that is building a $95 million, 333,000-square-foot facility in the business park of New Century AirCenter.”
As Liberty Nation has documented, there has been a sea change in state government perceptions of bags of Chinese revenue flowing into their domains. As recently as three or four years ago, news of a new $95 million venture would have been greeted with great enthusiasm in much of the country, including from business-minded Republicans.
Governors on both sides of the political aisle tripped over themselves in the 2010s, beseeching China to invest in their states, even offering the lure of vital aerospace, rocketry, and semiconductor technology and military-grade minerals and ores to the expansionist communist tyranny. Around the same time, China assumed a massive presence on American college campuses, thanks to the help of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
All that has changed now, with the realization that China’s status as the number one geopolitical opponent of the United States can no longer be safely ignored.
China in the Heartland
The new Kansas legislation would prohibit Chinese property ownership “within 100 miles of any military installation amid fears of foreign interference and espionage,” The Star noted. That’s a big deal in the Jayhawk State.
(Photo by: Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“The radius would effectively apply the restrictions to most areas of the state, given the presence of McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Fort Riley near Junction City, and Fort Leavenworth. The Army Reserve also has a presence at New Century,” the paper related.
Despite this, the lure of the China money is still powerful. When the Cnano facility plan was first publicly discussed by the Johnson County Board of Commissioners in June 2023, the usual PC tropes were tossed out by those eager to defend the deal.
“Only one speaker, Gaylene Van Horn, made China the focus of her comments, pointing out that characters ‘that I take to be Chinese’ come up on a Google search of the company,” The Johnson County Post reports.
“As a taxpayer of this county I do not want a Chinese company owning anything in this county or this country,” she said.
“Chairman Mike Kelly later warned against ‘delving into the murky waters’ of invoking China as a threat. Doing so has ‘dangerous consequences for Americans of Asian descent,’ he said,” the paper detailed.
This is how patriotic American citizens were silenced for too long by bullying public officials with dollars on their minds. The board went on to approve a series of tax incentives for Cnano.
Declared Mission: ‘Clandestinely Acquire US Technology’
The national security concerns are obvious and dire. “Cnano USA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of C-Nano Technology Co., Ltd., which, in turn, is an entity that China-based Cnano Jiangsu Technology Co., Ltd. (Cnano Jiangsu) established in the British Virgin Islands, according to Cnano Jiangsu’s 2022 annual report,” The Daily Caller reported in December.
“While Cnano Jiangsu’s 2022 social responsibility report reveals that the firm employs several dozen CCP members, the company’s English website states that it’s also ‘undertaken a number of national 863’ projects, referring to a Chinese government program that the US government has accused of working to steal US technology,” the news site added.
“The number of Party members in the company has reached 28 people,” Cnano Jiangsu’s 2022 social responsibility report states.”
One does not have to be a security expert to see the threat presented by having devout Communist Party agents working in sensitive positions on US soil. Heck, even your average county commissioner should be able to understand it.
“Launched in 1986, the 863 Program ‘provides funding and guidance for efforts to clandestinely acquire US technology and sensitive economic information,’ according to the US Director of National Intelligence,” The Daily Caller wrote. “State-run media outlet Xinhua reported that the 863 Program was incorporated into the National Key Research and Development Program of China in 2016, though the 863 Program remained listed as an active, independent program on the Ministry of Science and Technology’s website until at least 2018.”
The movement to combat this domestic threat is growing on the state, and not the federal, level.
“At least 15 states enacted restrictions on foreign ownership of real property during the first six months of 2023, according to a July report from the Congressional Research Service,” The Kansas City Star observed.
It’s just like the illegal immigration battle now being waged across the United States. If a corruption-plagued Washington, DC, won’t act to defend America’s national security interests within her own borders, then it’s up to the individual states to step up and take action.
As this occurs, the divide between the federal government and the people it purports to represent, which already has assumed Grand Canyon-chasm proportions, grows ever wider.
