EXCLUSIVE—Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders will announce on Tuesday that a Chinese state-owned corporation must sell more than 100 acres of agricultural land in northeast Arkansas, the consequence of a law signed by Sanders earlier this year barring ownership of agricultural land by prohibited foreign parties, Townhall has learned.
The 160 acres of land owned by Syngenta — an agrichemical company headquartered in Switzerland and owned by Chinese Communist Party-controlled ChemChina — is the first to be hit with the consequences of Act 636 which went into effect earlier this year after being signed by Governor Sanders.
As summarized by the state House, the legislation "prohibits certain foreign parties from acquiring any interest in Arkansas agricultural land, provides penalties for violations, [and] creates the Office of Agricultural Intelligence for information analysis and enforcement." The Chinese Communist Party is one such entity that is now prohibited.
Governor Sanders will announce the first action taken under Act 636 alongside Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin and Agriculture Secretary Wes Ward at noon ET.
"For far too long, in the name of tolerance, we've let dangerous governments infiltrate our country," Governor Sanders told Townhall of her administration's action. "Arkansas will tolerate them no longer."
"Today, Arkansas is becoming the first state in the country to force a Chinese state-owned company to sell their farmland," Sanders noted. "This isn't about where you're from, it's about where your loyalties lie. We simply can't trust those who pledge allegiance to a hostile foreign power."
In her remarks this afternoon, Governor Sanders is expected to invoke the eye-opening events that have taken place in Israel as another horrific example of how America's enemies are on the march around the world — and here in the U.S.
Sanders will also remind that it's not just Hamas and Hezbollah but the Iranian regime that funds terrorism and chants "death to America" that poses a threat to the United States — along with Russian authoritarianism and the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to usurp America's role in the world.
In regard to China, Governor Sanders' efforts have already — within just months of taking office — proven fruitful in her bid to protect Arkansas — as well as the United States by extension — and its residents from the CCP's well-documented malign influence.
Her efforts and Tuesday's action make Sanders' Arkansas the first state in the U.S. to make such a move curbing the CCP's ability to purchase land in strategic locations around the U.S. for any number of reasons — corporate espionage, theft of research, surveillance of Americans, observation of sensitive military installations — beginning with Syngenta and its holdings in Arkansas. Officially, the CCP state-owned entity uses its 160-acre property in Arkansas for seed research. However, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, Syngenta's parent company ChemChina is listed as a Chinese military company.
As Governor Sanders is expected to note, seeds are a technology that can be ripped off by CCP-owned companies to eliminate any competitive edge held by American agriculture and even be used by our country's foes to target American crops.
Townhall has also learned that Syngenta has already been notified that it must withdraw from its land in Arkansas. If, for whatever reason, the Chinese state-owned company balks at the demand and refuses to sell its property, the state attorney general is permitted to bring legal proceedings to remove Syngenta from Arkansas' land under Act 636.
In addition to Act 636, Governor Sanders has also signed Act 525 to ban drones made by Chinese and Russian companies as well as Act 758 to prohibit public contracts with the Chinese Communist Party.
With Tuesday's announcement, Governor Sanders will again show that it is possible for conservative Republicans to, as some pundits put it, "walk and chew gum at the same time." In addition to efforts to restrict the CCP's activities in the United States, Sanders has — within less than a year in office — signed sweeping education reform, slashed state taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars, cracked down on violent criminals, and enacted protections against COVID mandates.