Is the U.S. real estate industry infiltrated and being used to facilitate Chinese espionage?
China’s global intelligence-gathering and subversive activities occur at multiple levels, but all of those activities have been facilitated by the massive Chinese migration to the United States and other Western nations, which began with the “Opening” of China under the Nixon Administration and accelerated thereafter.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, Chinese immigration to the United States increased nearly seven-fold since 1980, reaching almost 2.5 million in 2018, an unknown number of which remain loyal to the Chinese Communist Party.
Chinese espionage networks are often managed out of Chinese consulates in major U.S. cities, but those allegedly diplomatic facilities are insufficiently staffed to exploit the wide range of targets deemed essential by China’s state security apparatus.
There is a need, then, for non-official cover (NOC) Chinese intelligence agents, without diplomatic immunity, who are usually “sanitized” at intermediate locations outside or inside the U.S. before arriving at their target area of operation in the United States.
Chinese NOC intelligence networks consist of deep controller agents, perhaps “husband and wife” teams that monitor each other, as well as a host of facilitators within local Chinese communities, who otherwise appear to conduct normal lives as U.S. citizens, but are indispensable to the success of China’s intelligence-gathering and subversive activities.
Evidence indicates that the U.S. real estate industry is infiltrated by Chinese intelligence for the purpose of moving agents and money to support espionage activities, including the acquisition of residential properties near vital U.S. military installations, not just large land purchases which have been reported for U.S. Air Forces bases in Texas and North Dakota.
One such vital location, not amenable to large land purchases, is the Hawaiian Islands, home of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Headquarters and the naval base at Pearl Harbor.
The following image is the view from a residential property suspected of being purchased for its proximity to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Headquarters and its unobstructed view above the Pearl Harbor naval base.
The real estate activities practiced by Chinese immigrants in Hawaii are often convoluted and complex, involving multiple companies, sometimes embedded in each other and connected to companies from other U.S. states or offshore entities, all of which are eventually linked back to China.
The following scheme was constructed from publicly-available sources illustrating the actual purchase of property like the one shown above. The names of the individuals involved and the companies they represent have been changed, but all the evidence from Hawaii indicates what appears to be an effort to hide the details of real estate transactions and the flow of money.
Acquisition by China of property strategically located near vital U.S. military installations provides an opportunity for surveillance and possible sabotage. Based on County of Oahu records, the property has also been purchased by newly-arrived Chinese within a half mile of Fort Shafter, the Headquarters of the United States Army Pacific and the 25th Infantry Division.
There may also be an attempt underway by China to create a critical mass of Chinese property owners in the Hawaiian Islands that are loyal to the Chinese Communist Party with the strategic goal of separating the islands from U.S. sovereignty.
The scenario described above is being repeated throughout the United States and represents a threat to our national security and, at a minimum, should be investigated more vigorously, especially by U.S. military commands that may be directly affected.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He had a civilian career in international business and medical research. Dr. Sellin is the author of Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution. His email address is [email protected].