US Forces Chinese-Owned Company To Sell Property It Says ‘Too Close’ to US Military Base

According to reports from the Associated Press and Reuters on May 13, U.S. President Joe Biden issued an order on Monday banning a Chinese-owned cryptocurrency mining company from purchasing and using real estate near a U.S. military nuclear missile base in Wyoming, citing “national security risks.”

In a statement released that same day, the White House said that property owned by MineOne Partners in the U.S. was less than a mile away from the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, home to Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The statement made unfounded allegations about the foreign-owned company’s property posing a risk to U.S. national security by being located so close to a sensitive military area and about it containing specialized foreign equipment that could be used for surveillance and espionage activities. MineOne and its affiliates have been given a deadline by which they must have divested themselves of the property and removed all equipment.

In sum, the May 13 statement on the official White House website found that MineOne Partners is a registered company of the British Virgin Islands, majority-owned by Chinese nationals, and that it, along with a number of subsidiaries or affiliates, acquired real estate less than a mile from the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in June 2022 for the purpose of cryptocurrency mining.

The Associated Press reported that Biden’s order came amid an investigation by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The CFIUS is a little-known but powerful government committee tasked with reviewing foreign investments in the U.S. for national security concerns; it also has the power to force companies to change their ownership structures or divest from the U.S. altogether.

It is reported that in 2018, the U.S. Congress passed a law expanding the CFIUS’ authority to review real estate transactions near sensitive sites across the U.S., which include the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base.

But the Associated Press has noted that the CFIUS order is actually “vague” on the specific national security concerns involving MineOne Partners, with the U.S. Treasury Department merely claiming that the transactions included “specialized and foreign-sourced equipment potentially capable of facilitating surveillance and espionage activities,” and that such equipment “presented a significant national security risk,” but without providing any substantive evidence.

MineOne Partners and related parties are required to sell or transfer the real estate not later than 120 days from the date of the order, and it must remove all buildings or equipment from the real estate within 90 days. MineOne Partners has not yet commented.

Last August, The Washington Post found that, in 2023, 81 bills were put forward by lawmakers in 33 U.S. states to prohibit the Chinese government and some Chinese companies and citizens from purchasing farmland or real estate in the vicinity of military bases. More than a dozen such bills have become law in places like Alabama, Idaho and Virginia, many of which are Republican-majority states — but in some states, the bills have also received bipartisan support.

But the fact is that China’s land holdings in the U.S. are not just exceedingly small but have been dwindling in recent years. A December 2022 report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed that Chinese business entities owned 349,000 acres of agricultural and non-agricultural land in the U.S., slightly less than 1% of all foreign-held land in the U.S.

In a March 2023 article, Forbes Magazine used the term “surprising fact” in describing the amount of U.S. land held by China as lagging far behind Canada (12.8 million acres) and not even being as much as that held by the Cayman Islands (672,000 acres).

What has been dubbed the “land grab panic” is nothing more than a lie and a new pretext for certain U.S. politicians, who are using it to yet again fabricate and promote the idea that China is using various means to initiate confrontations or even a war against the U.S.

On American sensationalism surrounding Chinese land purchases posing a “national security risk,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry has responded that, over the years, Chinese companies’ investments in the U.S. have made significant contributions to promoting U.S. domestic employment and economic development. Words and deeds that expand the concept of national security and politicize trade and investment issues are contrary to market economy principles and the rules of international trade. These are what undermine the outside world’s confidence in the U.S. market environment.