The second-largest foreign landowner in the U.S. is a Chinese billionaire who is a member of the Chinese Communist Party.
Chen Tianqiao, the founder, chairman and CEO of global investment firm Shanda Group, owns approximately 200,000 acres of land in Oregon. Chen also has extensive ties to the Chinese government, ranging from CCP membership to executive roles in CCP-affiliated organizations.
In 2015, Chen acquired 198,000 acres in Oregon, according to Land Report. The $85 million purchase made the Chinese national the 82nd-largest property owner in the U.S. and the second-largest foreign U.S. land owner, Bloomberg reported, second only to a Canadian family who owns over 1 million acres of Maine.
Oregon’s Bull Springs Skyline Forest accounts for approximately 33,000 of Chen’s acreage, which is located west of Bend, Oregon.
Oregon Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer said she was “deeply concerned that individuals tied to the Chinese Communist Party are buying up timberland, which is one of our most precious and finite resources.”
“Foreign ownership of United States lands is a serious problem that has rightfully sparked unease among farmers, ranchers and foresters across the country,” Chavez-DeRemer told the DCNF.
Chen also owns several urban properties in the U.S., including the Vanderbilt Mansion in Manhattan, the Seeley Mudd Estate near Los Angeles and a 150,000 square-foot research facility at Caltech called the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience.
Chinese ownership of U.S. land, in particular agricultural land, has come under increased scrutiny from GOP governors, who see it as a potential national security threat. Several states, including Florida, have taken legislative and executive action to ban Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland, the most recent being Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s January 2024 executive order banning such purchases near military installations.
“One of the Chinese Communist Party’s goals is to undermine and weaken America,” Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio told the DCNF. “This includes instances where our greatest adversary continues to buy land — whether its farmland or near our installations.”
A 2016 Sohu.com article identified Chen and several other Chinese CEOs as CCP members. Likewise, Chen’s profile on the Chinese financial portal Sina, which was last updated in November 2023, identifies him as a CCP member.
Chen even has a favorite Mao Zedong quote, according to state-run media outlet China News Service: “Strategically we should despise all our enemies, but tactically we should take them all seriously.”
Above and beyond his CCP membership, Chinese government records show that Chen served as a representative to the 11th and 12th councils of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which ran between 2008 and 2018.
The CPPCC is a Chinese government agency where “all the relevant united front actors inside and outside the party come together: party elders, intelligence officers, diplomats, propagandists, military officers and political commissars, united front workers, academics and businesspeople,” former CIA officer Peter Mattis testified to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 2019.
“The increase in PRC-affiliated U.S. land purchases in recent years is a growing cause for concern,” a House Select Committee on the CCP aide told the DCNF. “We can start with adding a presumption of denial for entities affiliated with the PRC when it comes to land acquisitions near national security sites such as military bases that the CCP could use for intelligence collection or worse.”
A Shanda spokesperson contacted the DCNF by email and said that Chen Tianqiao had been a CPPCC member.
“As a nationally recognized entrepreneur in the early 2000s, Mr. Chen was indeed a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory committee within China,” the spokesperson wrote. “He resigned from this position in late 2017.”
The spokesperson also shared a 2015 document with the DCNF that was sent from the Department of Treasury to Whitefish Cascades Forest Resource, LLC, which the billionaire used as his investment vehicle to purchase the land in Oregon, according to Land Report.
The 2015 document states that the Treasury Department determined that there were “no unresolved national security concerns” that would prohibit Whitefish Cascades from purchasing the Oregon land.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is “an interagency committee authorized to review certain transactions involving foreign investment in the United States and certain real estate transactions by foreign persons, in order to determine the effect of such transactions on the national security of the United States,” according to the Treasury Department.