Deep in the heart of Texas, Chinese communists are getting nervous. A roundup is beginning and a trip to the pen awaits some of Beijing’s minions.
Governor Greg Abbott has directed the Texas Department of Public Safety “to target and arrest anyone implementing CCP influence operations [that] forcibly return people to China.” He said that “Texas will not tolerate the harassment or coercion of the more than 250,000 individuals of Chinese descent who legally call Texas home by the Chinese Communist Party or its heinous proxies.”
Satisfaction
“Heinous proxies.” The cattle are not yet corralled and they’ve already been branded.
Individual Texans are welcome to join the roundup. They can report “suspicious activity at iwatchtx.org, through the iWatchTexas mobile app, or by calling 844-643-2251.”
Communist spies will be spied upon. That is quite satisfying.
The FBI is joining in too. An FBI spokesman said that the agency “has pushed a public campaign since January to stop the harassment, intimidation and assault of people in the United States by foreign governments. The FBI is looking for potential victims in the Houston area who have been harassed by agents of the Chinese government.”
This might be good news as long as the FBI can stay out of the way of local law enforcement, a rather big “if.”
Last week the governor also ordered state agencies “to protect Texans from exposure to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by fully divesting from China as soon as possible.”
He was quite blunt: “I direct Texas investing entities that you are prohibited from making any new investments of state funds in China. To the extent you have any current investments in China, you are required to divest at the first available opportunity. Texas will defend and safeguard itself and our public treasury from any potential threat, including those posed by the CCP.”
One wonders how this is playing in Beijing.
Last year, Abbott had joined three other governors to ask Vanguard to craft emerging market funds that exclude China. His new order takes things a step further.
Naming names
But the governor has even more for China, and he is not afraid to name names.
On November 20, his office reported “an executive order to protect Texas’s critical infrastructure from threats posed by the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party. The Governor directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management and Public Utility Commission of Texas to prepare for potential threats against Texas’s critical infrastructure from a hostile foreign government or their proxies.”
“China has made it clear that they can—and will—target and attack America’s critical infrastructure,” Abbott’s statement read. “Just this past year, a hostile Chinese government actor targeted America’s communications, energy, transportation, water, and wastewater systems, threatening our national security. Texas will continue to protect our critical infrastructure to ensure the safety of Texans from potential threats by the Chinese Communist Party or any hostile foreign government.”
Texas is protecting Texans from China. It’s hard to picture Minnesota Governor Tim Walz speaking in these terms.
Texas is also drafting legislation to prohibit Chinese entities (“hostile foreign organizations”) from owning land in Texas. The CCP has developed a taste for Texas land, directly or indirectly owning 162,000 acres, more than it owns in any other state.
Indirectly, the Reds operate through their partially or wholly owned enterprises. Brian Cavanaugh, a consultant with American Global Strategies, says, “Any affiliation with any business that’s owned or operated by the Chinese Communist Party, that’s a state-owned enterprise, and it’s going to be doing the business of the Chinese government.”
A happy trend
State limits on land ownership are something of a trend. The National Agricultural Law Center reports that since January 2024, most states “have proposed at least one piece of legislation to prohibit or restrict foreign investments and landholdings in land, particularly private agricultural land, located within the boundaries of their states to some degree.”
Everyone seems worried about Communist China. According to Committee 100, 76 bills are currently being considered in state legislatures “that would prohibit Chinese citizens from purchasing or owning property.”
“Of the 16 bills passed so far [in 2024], 10 prohibit Chinese citizens from purchasing or owning some form of property.” And “since the beginning of 2023, 251 bills restricting property ownership by foreign entities have been considered by 40 states (215 bills) and Congress (36 bills).”
If every state were to emulate Texas’s quadruple threat to Beijing, it would send a powerful message with immediate effects: no investments, active detection and prosecution of political agents, protection of infrastructure, and restrictions on property ownership.
Don’t mess with Texas, Beijing. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
