Between 2010 and 2020, the Chinese Communist Party’s holdings of American agricultural land surged by more than 5,300 percent. Let that number settle for a moment. CCP-linked entities now control over 352,000 acres of U.S. soil valued at $1.9 billion — and that only accounts for the purchases we actually know about. Shell companies with no real assets, no employees, and no discernible purpose have been quietly scooping up farmland across the country, sometimes right next to sensitive military installations. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a land deed.
In Tennessee, a company called Walton Tennessee LLC purchased roughly 500 acres in Loudon County — land that runs alongside the McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base. That company then sold over 100 parcels to foreign entities for as little as ten dollars apiece. Not ten thousand. Not ten hundred. Ten. The price of a sandwich. If that doesn’t make your blood pressure spike, you might want to check your pulse.
From the Daily Wire:
Marsha Blackburn’s first appearance on the Tennessee airwaves as she ramps up her run for governor features her literally crushing Chinese fortune cookies.
The longtime Republican lawmaker who just over a year ago was reelected to the U.S. Senate dropped her first statewide ad in her campaign for governor on Wednesday, and is using the spot to promise voters that she will fight to “protect Tennessee land from Chinese front companies.”
The ad is vintage Blackburn — blunt, unapologetic, and completely impossible to misread. She smashes fortune cookies on camera, each one revealing a campaign promise aimed directly at the CCP’s expanding footprint in the Volunteer State. Critics will call it theatrical. Fine. When hostile foreign governments are snapping up acreage near your military bases for pocket change, a dramatic campaign spot barely registers on the list of concerns.
The threat beneath our feet
But the symbolism only matters because the substance is genuinely alarming. Tennessee lawmakers recognized the danger back in 2023 and passed legislation blocking sanctioned foreign governments from purchasing agricultural land. Good start. Problem is, a law nobody enforces is just a suggestion with a fancy seal on it. Despite state requirements that foreign land transfers be reported to the Secretary of State, the Walton Tennessee transactions were never properly filed. The loopholes aren’t theoretical. They’re already being walked through.
This is exactly what makes the issue a gubernatorial one. A senator can introduce bills and deliver floor speeches. A governor can direct state agencies, crack down on noncompliance, and dismantle the shell games that adversaries use to dodge regulations. Blackburn isn’t just switching offices. She’s moving to where the enforcement power actually lives.
A fighter since day one
What separates Blackburn from politicians who discovered China as a convenient applause line sometime around 2020 is her track record. She first raised the alarm about Chinese intellectual property theft in 2003 — back when most of Washington was still rolling out the welcome mat for Beijing at the World Trade Organization. Nobody was listening then. She kept going anyway.
Since those early days, she’s pushed legislation to shut down CCP-funded Confucius Institutes on American college campuses, backed bipartisan measures to combat Chinese espionage, and made a formal visit to Taiwan in 2022 to meet with its leadership. Not exactly the résumé of someone chasing headlines.
“As governor, I’ll work with the legislators to tighten up those loopholes and hunt down every adversary who tries to get a foothold in our state,” Blackburn told the Daily Wire. That’s not campaign bluster from a newcomer. That’s a promise backed by twenty-three years of receipts.
Closing the loopholes
Blackburn enters the Republican primary as the prohibitive favorite, having won her 2024 Senate reelection by nearly thirty points. Her pledge to coordinate with the Trump administration on combating CCP influence gives the campaign a federal-state partnership that few gubernatorial candidates can credibly offer. Washington sets the direction. Nashville supplies the teeth. That’s how federalism is supposed to work.
The real question isn’t whether Tennessee will pass another law. It’s whether the state will elect a governor willing to actually enforce one.
A line in the red dirt
Strip away the fortune cookies and the campaign theatrics, and what remains is a straightforward sovereignty question. Every acre transferred to a CCP-linked shell company is an acre that no longer fully answers to the community surrounding it. Marsha Blackburn has spent two decades naming a threat that others preferred to ignore. Now she’s running to do something about it at the state level, where policy meets pavement. Tennessee — and every other state watching — would be wise to pay attention.
Key Takeaways
- CCP-linked ownership of U.S. farmland has exploded by over 5,300% in a single decade.
- Tennessee land near military bases was sold to foreign entities for as little as ten dollars.
- Blackburn has fought Chinese influence since 2003 — long before it became a popular issue.
- A governor’s enforcement power is the missing piece in closing dangerous legal loopholes.
Sources: Daily Wire, The Tennessean
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