The U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party held an "Iowa Roundtable on Chinese Communist Party Agricultural Technology Theft" and of U.S. lands, according to a press advisory. Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher, and members Raja Krishnamoorthi and Ashley Hinson led the discussion with farmers and stakeholders on the issue’s impacts on American farming.
"The question we want to talk about today is why is the Chinese Communist Party after our seeds and our agricultural technology, in my opinion, is part of a much larger countrywide slow-motion heist of American intellectual property. The FBI estimated that China steals between 225 to $600 billion worth of American intellectual property and trade secrets every single year," Gallagher said. "That's every year. It's been called the greatest transfer of wealth in human history."
Krishnamoorthi said in 2017 an employee at Monsanto bought a one-way ticket to China, loading a proprietary piece of software on an SD card. But fellow employees were suspicious and alerted the FBI, who arrested the employee at O'Hare International Airport.
"We can't have a situation where we're constantly developing secrets and research and doing the hard work of innovating, and then all of a sudden having that getting stolen from us, especially when agricultural exports, especially from your district, and others are so vital to our economy," Krishnamoorthi said.
Hinson said the persistent intellectual property theft costs taxpayers money, costs rural Americans money and it puts safety and security at risk.
Suzanne Shirbroun of the Iowa Soybean Association and a sixth-generation farmer said revoking China's permanent most favored national status could deal a great blow to the American farmer. She said the U.S. needs to diversify its export markets, especially in Southeast Asia to lessen dependence on China as a buyer of products from the U.S. and lessen China's global influence.
She asked Congress to target export controls of sensitive technologies in the agricultural industry, reduce retaliatory tariffs and insist China make progress in establishing a timely, transparent biotech approval process.
The American First Policy Institute (AFPI) reported that CCP ownership of American farmland has been greatly increasing in recent years, citing an increase from 13,720 acres to 352,140 acres from 2010 to 2020. This land grab from the CCP comes from the “Belt and Road Initiative”, reports AFPI, which seeks Chinese control of food sources, as well as the control of other resources like minerals.
AFPI also reported that although in the past “more than a dozen states” enacted restrictive laws on Chinese ownership of land, these barriers were often ineffective on account of “pressure from business groups." Because of this, many more state bills have been introduced in 2023 to double down on domestic agriculture protection from CCP access.
