DeSantis Vows To Bar Chinese Communist Party Operatives From Buying Up Florida Property
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis isn’t putting out the Sunshine State’s welcome mat for the Chinese Communist PartyTuesday’s pledge to stop operatives purchasing property.
DeSantis pointed out that people who have ties to CCP were “gobbling up land” The U.S. and other Western Hemisphere countries have been affected, raising concerns that President Xi’s regime is establishing tentacles abroad. He said that Beijing was working together with globalists to weaken the West. The strategy includes buying property.
“When they have interests that are opposed to ours and you see how they’ve wielded their authority, especially with President Xi, who’s taken a much more Marxist turn since he’s been ruling China, [it] is not in the best interests of Florida to have the Chinese Communist Party owning farmland, owning land close to military bases,” DeSantis said.
China holds more than 1.2 Million acres of U.S. land. according to the American Enterprise Institute. These holdings include approximately 700,000 acres farmland and nearly 500,000 acres commercial and industrial property across states such as California, Iowa and Nebraska. A Chinese firm owned by a billionaire with close CCP ties is building a massive wind farm about 70 miles from Laughlin Air Force base in southwest Texas, according to a 2020 Report By Foreign Policy.
DeSantis made the remarks on a visit Bonita Springs (Florida), and said that he opposed China’s control of farmland and acreage in close proximity to military bases as well as the CCP purchasing houses.
“My view is, okay, yeah, no farmland, but why would you want them buying residential developments or things like that?” He said. “I don’t want them owning subdivisions or things like that.”
DeSantis acknowledged that it will not be easy to craft policy that blocks people and companies with hidden ties to the CCP from buying into his state’s hot real estate market.
“The issue’s going to be if someone comes in and buys, it’s not the CCP that’s signing that,” He said. “These are holding companies. You’ve got to structure [legislation] in a way that will effectively police it. But yes, we do not need to have CCP influence in Florida’s economy.”
DeSantis, who served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee while in Congress from 2013-2018, said Florida has taken other measures to curb the CCP’s activity in his state, which he characterized as “insidious.”
“We banned the Confucius Institutes from our universities and our state colleges,” He said. “They have used those Confucius Institutes across the country to basically bring propaganda into our universities — as if our universities don’t have enough problems already.
“We’ve also done things to limit their ability to fund research in our universities,” He added. “I think we’re going to go even further than that. The legislature only went so far a couple years ago.”
DeSantis is thought to be considering a presidential bid in 2024. He lamented that Wall Street, the entertainment industry, and Wall Street seem willing to placate China to tap its market. He also said that the U.S. economy was too weak. “intertwined” China.
“And it hurts us,” He noted that the U.S. had relied on its opponent for medical supplies during COVID’s pandemic. “It hurts our economic vitality. It hurts our security.
“But this has been going on for many, many decades, so disentangling from China — I think it’s something that is very, very significant going forward,” He added.
DeSantis also stated that the World Economic Forum’s policies are also unwelcomed in Florida. The leftist group, which meets in Davos next week, is behind an array of global initiatives that conservatives say infringe on people’s freedoms. The so-called Environmental, Social, and Governance initiative (ESG), which aims to require companies to follow far-left policies that are not dictated by shareholders, but socialists and other environmental extremists, is one example.
“Basically their vision is they run everything and everybody else is just like a serf, like a peasant,” DeSantis said. “They say they’re going after energy, ESG, all these other things, and you see the Biden administration wants to nix gas stoves. Are you kidding me?
“Imagine how many people had the hurricane come through, didn’t have power right away but were able to turn on [gas stoves],” He added. “You cannot go down this road but that’s exactly what they want to do, and it’s really weakening Western society, Western values.”
DeSantis claimed that the CCP as well as the World Economic Forum work together to undermine the West.
“What I’ve said in Florida is that type of stuff coming out of Davos, those policies are dead on arrival in the state of Florida,” He said.
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