TESTIMONY: OHIO PROPERTY PROTECTION ACT

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TESTIMONY BEFORE
OHIO HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Committee on Public Safety

Good morning, Chair Abrams, Vice Chair Miller, and Ranking Member Thomas and members of the Ohio House Public Safety Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

My name is Adam Savit. I am the Director for China Policy at America First Policy Institute, a role I held previously when I testified before the Ohio Senate Veterans and Public Safety Committee in support of S.B. 226 in April 2024. In the intervening period, I served as Senior Advisor for National Security to United States Secretary of Agriculture Rollins, where I worked directly on the National Farm Security Action Plan and on modernizing enforcement of the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) — two of the most significant federal actions taken to address foreign adversary ownership of American land.

The significance of the H.B. 1 bill assignment is not lost on me. This is a designation that speaks for itself, and one this body has reserved for what it considers the most consequential legislation of the year. We at America First Policy Institute agree that protecting Ohio, and America, from foreign adversaries must be a central concern for all governments federal, state, and local.

This bill is building on Ohio’s history of supporting Ohioans. In 2023, through HB 33, Ohio enacted the Save Our Farmland and Protect Our National Security Act, prohibiting foreign adversaries listed on the Secretary of State’s registry from acquiring agricultural land in this state. Ohio joined a movement of more than a dozen states that recognized the same threat that year. HB 1 builds on that foundation. It expands the prohibition beyond agricultural land to cover “protected property” — real property within ten miles of a military installation or critical infrastructure facility. That expansion is what this body, as evidenced by the H.B. 1 designation, is seeking to advance today, and it is long overdue.

To understand why expanding these protections matters, it helps to understand where the threat began. In 2010, investors from the People’s Republic of China held 13,700 acres of U.S. agricultural land. According to the United States’ Department of Agriculture data that I worked on directly, foreign adversary-linked entities now control at least 247,000 acres of American agricultural land, a 1,700% increase.

The two cases that galvanized state action nationwide involved the agricultural sector, but ultimately, they were about proximity.

• 2010: Chinese investors held 13,700 acres of U.S. agricultural land, establishing an early foothold.
• 2019: Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked billionaire acquired 15,000 acres of agricultural land near Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas, with plans to build a wind farm that would have given him access to the state’s electricity grid.
• 2022: FuFeng Group, a CCP food manufacturer, purchased land near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota in a transaction that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) claimed was outside its jurisdiction.

In both the Texas and North Dakota cases, state and local action — not federal safeguards like CFIUS — stopped the threat. The lesson was clear: agricultural land restrictions alone are not enough. The proximity to military and critical infrastructure is the real vulnerability.

Secretary Rollins, and the entire cabinet, understand this immediate and growing threat. In July 2025, Agriculture Secretary Rollins launched the National Farm Security Action Plan alongside the Secretaries of War, Homeland Security, and the Attorney General, explicitly committing the United State Department of Agriculture (USDA) to work alongside state partners to ban foreign adversary land purchases. The plan frames agriculture as a top-tier national security asset and calls for protecting critical infrastructure. The plan also strengthened USDA’s coordination with CFIUS and launched new enforcement tools under AFIDA — the same statute I worked to modernize during my time at USDA. The message from Washington is unambiguous: what Ohio House leadership is seeking to do in H.B. 1 is exactly the type of decisive action, complementary to federal action, that our national security leaders see as critically important to counter our foreign adversaries.

We also know that when states build the right legal framework, enforcement works. Arkansas passed Act 636, its foreign landownership law, in 2023 and used it almost immediately. Governor Sanders ordered Northrup King Seed Co. — a subsidiary of Syngenta Seeds, ultimately owned by ChemChina, a Chinese state-owned enterprise listed by the Pentagon as a Chinese military company — to divest 160 acres of Arkansas farmland. The state also levied a $280,000 civil penalty for Syngenta’s failure to disclose its ownership on time. Syngenta completed the divestiture in May 2025. Arkansas became the first state in the nation to successfully force a CCP-linked company off its soil, because it had the legal tools to do so. Ohio has the agricultural piece in place. H.B. 1 gives this state the rest of what Arkansas showed us is necessary – proximity restrictions, enforcement authority, and ability to act before the federal government does.

Ohio does not have to look far to understand the proximity threat. Fuyao Glass America, a company operating in Moraine, is owned by China’s Fuyao Group. Academic research documents that CCP members occupy over 70% of Fuyao Group’s key management and technical leadership positions. In July 2024, Fuyao was raided by agents, including Homeland Security and IRS Criminal Investigation, as part of an investigation into alleged labor trafficking and money laundering. A civil forfeiture complaint was filed in April 2025 alleged the company paid approximately $126 million to staffing entities accused of employing workers who illegally entered the United States rather than hiring native Ohioans at fair wages.

This is a CCP-connected company, under active federal scrutiny, operating on Ohio soil, and it has retained lobbyists to influence this very legislation. That fact alone should tell this committee something about what is at stake and whose interests are served by further delay.

HB 1 is carefully targeted. It prohibits foreign adversaries — as designated by Ohio’s Secretary of State in consultation with established federal lists — from acquiring property near military installations and critical infrastructure. It does not target American citizens of any background, and lawful permanent residents of the United States are not the subject of this legislation. This committee should reject any attempt to mischaracterize this bill and should not allow political pressure to substitute for a fair reading of its text.

Ohio’s neighbors are not waiting. This month, Indiana enacted ESB 256, prohibiting foreign adversary-connected persons from acquiring all real property, mineral rights, and water rights in the state — not just agricultural land — while building in meaningful due process protections that make the law legally defensible. Texas went further still: Governor Abbott signed SB 17 into law last June, banning foreign adversaries from purchasing virtually all real property statewide, including agricultural, residential, commercial, and industrial land, effective September 1, 2025. More than 25 states have enacted some form of foreign landownership restriction. Ohio has been a leader and H.B. 1 ensures that it stays one at a time that calls for increased vigilance and decision action when it comes to the foreign adversaries that are probing our national security vulnerabilities.

I have worked on this issue from inside the federal government and as Director of the China Policy Initiative at America First Policy Institute. The conclusion is always the same: the federal government cannot close this gap alone, and states that act are doing the right thing. H.B. 1 is Ohio's opportunity to finish what it started in 2023.

Thank you.