A Chinese billionaire and former military official who has purchased about 140,000 acres of agricultural land in Val Verde County, Texas, since 2016 and planned to build a wind farm on the property didn’t report the foreign ownership to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and was assessed a reduced fine.
When the community took note that the proposed wind project would have allowed the Chinese owner, billionaire Sun Guangxin, access to Texas’s electrical grid and that the property is near the Laughlin Air Force Base, a training ground for military pilots, it raised national security concerns.
