A small city in North Dakota rejected a Chinese government-linked agricultural project located right near a key U.S. military drone base after the Biden administration refused to act against the “significant threat to national security.”
Early last year, Fufeng Group, a massive agricultural company with strong ties to Beijing, purchased 370 acres as a location for its new wet corn mill near the Grand Forks Air Force Base.
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After months of consideration, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States declined to block the project despite urging from North Dakota’s Republican senators and other congressional Republicans on Capitol Hill. However, the Grand Forks City Council stepped in on Monday to unanimously block the Fufeng project from moving forward. The vote came just days after a Chinese spy balloon was allowed to traverse the U.S., including floating over a Montana military base, before being shot down off the coast of the Carolinas.
Concerns over the Chinese land buy came as Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), and John Hoeven (R-ND) sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin early last year asking CFIUS to “conduct a review of Chinese food manufacturer Fufeng Group’s recent purchase.” The senators said the proximity of the land to the base “led to concern that Fufeng operations could provide cover for PRC surveillance or interference with the missions located at that installation, given Fufeng Group’s reported ties to the Chinese Communist Party.”
The Grand Forks base is one of the key locations for the RQ-4 Global Hawk drone, a “remotely piloted aircraft with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities” used by the U.S. around the world.
Last year, dozens of House Republicans also warned top Biden Cabinet secretaries about the “alarming” efforts by the Chinese government-linked company.
When the sale was first announced last year, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, also a Republican, initially told the Grand Forks Herald that “with Fufeng in Grand Forks, it will be North Dakota — not China — that reaps the benefits of the jobs, facilities, economic activity and tax revenue.”
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But the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission quickly warned that Fufeng has “ties” to the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party. The security commission noted that the U.S. air base “houses some of the United States’ top intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities” and that “the location of the land close to the base is particularly convenient for monitoring air traffic flows in and out of the base, among other security-related concerns.”
Fufeng business filings state that Fufeng Group Chairman Li Xuechun “is a member of the Shandong Province 12th People’s Congress,” which is a part of the ruling CCP’s governing structure. The Chinese company also said this year, in response to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, that it controls Xinjiang Fufeng Biotechnologies based in Xinjiang and that it “intends to continue the sale of products from Xinjiang Fufeng to the United States.”
