Air Force Shoots Down China’s Plans for Giant Corn Mill Close to North Dakota Base
Grand Forks strikes down all plans after discovering firm’s deep ties to the Chinese Communist party.
While tensions were escalating between the US and China over the Chinese surveillance balloon, the US Air Force was trying to shoot down China’s plans for a corn mill in North Dakota, saying that the project ‘presents a significant threat to national security.
In a letter, Assistant Air Force Secretary Andrew Hunter wrote that the proposed corn mill raised ‘near- and long-term risks of significant impacts to our operations in the area.’
The subject of the letter is the plan by Fufeng USA to build a giant milling facility on the border of Grand Forks, North Dakota – about 12 miles from the Air Force Base.
At the outset of debate around the factory, some residents objected to establishing closer economic ties with China, others argued it could easily be used as a spying facility for the hostile Chinese government.
The city of about 60,000’s mayor, Brandon Bochenski, who previously supported the project, said Tuesday he would move to block construction by attempting to deny a number of building permits.
Grand Forks, North Dakota officials agreed unanimously and struck down all plans to proceed with the project, especially after the firm’s deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party were revealed.
The 5-0 unanimous vote Monday night from the Grand Forks City Council surrounding the Fufeng Group project was met with cheers and chants of “USA!” from the public in attendance.
Prior to the meeting, Grand Forks Mayor Brandon Bochenski, during an interview on “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” told Fox News that the city had options to “basically deny infrastructure and deny building permits.
“So they have the land, but they have no ability to build anything on it,” he added.
The Chinese-owned Fufeng Group, which describes itself as an “internationalized bio-fermentation products manufacturer,” paid $2.3 million to purchase the 300 acres of land just 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base, home to top secret drone technology. The company was planning to invest $700 million to open the mill.
But local officials and federal authorities had warned that Fufeng has deep ties to the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Currently, China has over 300,000 acres of agricultural land in this country.
Chinese holdings of U.S. agricultural land have increased significantly in recent years, and nearly half of the Chinese-held acres of agricultural land at the end of 2020 were in Texas, according to a U.S. Agriculture Department database obtained by The Wall Street Journal under a Freedom of Information Act request.
Overall, the data shows that Chinese investors—individuals, foreign entities or U.S. corporations with foreign shareholders—held more than 338,000 acres at the end of 2020, according to the USDA data, excluding nonagricultural land.
That is up from more than 75,000 acres at the end of 2010.
Still, China owns slightly less than 1% of all U.S. farmland held by foreigners, who in total owned around 3% of all privately held agricultural land at the end of 2021, according to the USDA.
However, given the balloon incident and the increasing tensions between China and the US, I suspect many towns will be taking the approach Grand Forks did.
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They should shoot down China’s plans to build, buy or borrow anything is this country.
And, send every single one of their students home. Every single solitary one.
拜拜
bái bái
Bye-bye
All Chinese owned land should be seized as partial payment for their intrusion into our airspace.
Can’t really be done, since the various owners of that land are not responsible for what the PLA does. The land could be taken for public use, but the owners would have to be compensated at market rates. Also, some plausible public benefit would have to be proposed from the taking of each parcel, and if the takings were openly related to Chinese ownership the courts would likely strike them down as clearly pretextual. Even if they didn’t, the Chinese might take it to the supreme court, which might well overturn Kelo and demand a genuine public use for each parcel taken.
I have no doubt that some of the silos and attics would have been teeming with spy devices.
Or, full of fentanyl. You know. Drug attics.
A trial balloon aborted before conception.
A trial balloon floated. A burden — not that “burden” — predicted. A conception aborted.
Whereas the military industrial complex humanely mitigates progress, the social industrial complex takes pride in parading the wicked solution with an ethical religious fervor.
Plus, you don’t know where their corn has been.
Why is the AF getting credit for what the town council did?
China has owned Smithfield foods in my area for at least 5 yrs, which is in close proximity to many military assets including Langley AFB and Norfolk Naval base.
It’s funny that people, with the spy balloon(s), sudden are finding out that Smithfield has been owned by a Chinese company for 10yrs, isn’t it? I wonder what people make of the company announcing last year it had had enough of Cali and Newsome’s regulations and tax burden and is closing it’s plants in California.
If it had to do with California’s stupid pork and bacon “pig hotels” law, any American company worth its salt would have done the same. Though I suspect few have the gonads anymore.
That would indicate that it’s not a PLA operation. If its true purpose were military then the location would matter to it more than anything, and it would stay put no matter how high the taxes or how burdensome the regulations. If it’s willing to move to a location with better economics but fewer spying opportunities then it’s likely to be genuinely there for the economics, and thus probably a legitimate private business by people who happen to be Chinese citizens. We should have no objection to that.
That is bad news.
“paid $2.3 million to purchase the 300 acres”! That seems pretty cheap. Is this an average price for farm land?
That’s actually about twice the average per acre cost of farmland so they paid a premium. The land the bought most likely is not all tillable either. Most likely they looked at it as industrial property not agricultural land.
It would be very very expensive for farmland around here.
Commie China isn’t even attempting to be subtle. Which is (hopefully) a fatal flaw.
Petty dictatorships never are. China just buys off any potential western pundits or critics who then parrot CCP propaganda.
When you’ve already installed idiots behind the levers of power, subtlety is superfluous.
They want unrestricted warfare, we should give them a taste.
I think that Assistant Air Force Secretary Andrew Hunter’s home may soon be raided by the FBI. He is obviously a source of misinformation, and probably a domestic terrorist.