I sat in the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee hearing on March 6 watching a parade of witnesses — roughly 30 people, all but four were likely naturalized citizens or green card holders from China — rail against SB 17, a bill authored by Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican from Brenham, to stop hostile foreign entities from snapping up Texas land.
What I saw wasn’t just a policy debate; it was a masterclass in how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) turns American freedoms into weapons against us.
SB 17, dubbed “Stopping Foreign Adversaries’ Land Grabs,” is straightforward: It bars governments, their agents, and entities from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea from owning Texas dirt. Kolkhorst’s aim is clear: Keep hostile regimes away from our military bases, farmland, and infrastructure, like Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas, or the ranches feeding our state.
The bill carves out U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, meaning most of those testifying won’t be touched by it if it becomes law. Yet, to hear them tell it, you’d think Texas was resurrecting Jim Crow and the Chinese Exclusion Act to strip Asians of their rights.
At one point, a senior political organizer from the awkwardly named National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC) Action Fund Texas launched into a script that could’ve been texted from Beijing.
“SB 17 threatens to unfairly strip individuals of their property rights based solely on their national origin,” they said, warning of “invasive investigations” and “seizure without due process.” They invoked Jim Crow, claiming the bill’s vagueness down to weeds three feet high as a “public nuisance,” would target immigrants, even citizens, from “designated countries.” The kicker: “Discriminatory practices have no place in our legal system.”
Then there was the witness, one of the first up, who claimed SB 17 “specifically targets the Asian community,” predicting a surge in hate crimes where“more Asian grandmas and grandpas” are attacked, their “blood on your hands.” Never mind that the bill doesn’t touch citizens or green card holders, a status most of the folks testifying likely hold. Across 30-plus testimonies, the refrain was identical: discrimination, lost land rights, racist overreach. It was a chorus so tight you’d swear they rehearsed it.
Here’s the rub: I’ve seen this playbook before. Back in 2009, as a California assemblyman, I watched Chinese consulate reps swarm our state capitol to kill a Tibet Awareness Day resolution. They leaned on Democrats, including some now big names like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Congressman Ted Lieu, to tank it, proving the CCP’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) doesn’t just meddle overseas; it twists U.S. politics at every level.
Seeing the same machine humming in Austin last week, I decided to shift my own testimony that day, pointing out that those who testified before me amplified a narrative straight from the Chinese Embassy as chronicled by The Washington Post in 2023: land restrictions on hostile nations “fuel Asian hatred” and “racial discrimination.” For good measure, I noted that the same Chinese Embassy threatened the U.S. with war only the day before.
The UFWD thrives on mobilizing diaspora voices and sympathetic groups like NAKASEC to cry racism, drowning out Kolkhorst’s real aim: blocking Beijing’s strategic land grabs. Texas isn’t targeting “Asian grandmas”; it’s targeting a regime that’s bought up 350,000 acres of U.S. farmland since 2010, often near military sites. Chinese entities like Fufeng Group snapping up land by Grand Forks Air Force Base or Sun Guangxin’s sprawl near Laughlin aren’t just real estate deals — they’re espionage hubs and food security plays. The FBI’s got counterintelligence cases piling up; China’s not here to play nice.
Yet the testimony I heard ignored all that. The NAKASEC organizer fretted about the Texas AG’s “expanded powers,” but SB 17’s enforcement is tied to clear security risks, not nationality witch hunts. One witness dragged up a 2020 Midland knife attack to stoke fear, but the bill’s exemptions shred their victimhood act. The same witness claimed that Texas was fourth-highest in Asian hate crimes, but Texas is the second most populous state; the progressive utopias of Washington, New York, and California ranked ahead of Texas in that same report.
This wasn’t about facts. It was theater, scripted to exploit America’s racial fault lines and dodge the CCP’s endgame.
Why does it work? Because too many Americans, lawmakers included, swallow the discrimination bait instead of seeing the UFWD’s fingerprints.
Texas isn’t alone. States like South Dakota and Georgia are fighting the same fight, passing laws to lock out hostile ownership. But the CCP’s influence machine keeps grinding, banking on our openness to choke sensible policy with guilt trips.
Chuck DeVore is chief national initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a former California legislator, and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. He’s the author of
“The Crisis of the House Never United—A Novel of Early America.”