Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) and several lawmakers gathered in a sweltering field next to an old barn in the tiny farm community of Palmyra on July 15 to announce state officials had recently blocked a Chinese state-owned company from buying land near the Provo Airport.
Cox said he wanted to make clear that “Utah is reaffirming a strong message that it’s been sending for years.”
“We will not allow adversarial foreign entities to buy up strategic land in our state,” Cox said.
He announced that “a Chinese state-owned company, tied to the People’s Liberation Army,” which is the military arm of the Chinese Communist Party “tried to purchase land near the Provo Airport very recently.”
Cox described the company, Cirrus Aircraft, as “majority-owned by the Avian Industry Corporation of China, also known as AVIC.”
“A restricted foreign entity under Utah law with deep military ties to the Chinese government, AVIC makes fighter jets, helicopters and drones for the Chinese military,” he said. “They appear on multiple U.S. federal watch lists and are banned from federal contracts, assistance and benefits due to serious national security concerns.”
Cirrus Aircraft, which sells private planes, began as a U.S. company based in Wisconsin, according to its website. In 2011, when many U.S. companies were struggling in the wake of the Great Recession, AVIC’s subsidiary China Aviation Industry General Aircraft bought Cirrus for about $210 million, Bloomberg reported in 2023.
That story noted Cirrus “hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing … but its parent company is under a great deal of scrutiny,” noting that in 2020 the U.S. began “flagging AVIC as a potential national security threat, imposing sanctions designed to hinder the growth of companies directly connected to China’s military.”
Cox’s office did not offer many details about what Cirrus had planned to do with the land near the Provo Airport, but the governor said “their proposed investment in Utah was millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs.”
“And I don’t care,” Cox said. “We are not for sale.”
The governor applauded the Utah Legislature for passing several laws meant to clamp down on “foreign threats” in the state, including House Bill 516, a bill sponsored by Rep. Candice Pierucci (R-Herriman) passed in 2024 that restricts companies controlled by countries including China, Iran, North Korea and Russia from buying land in Utah. It also requires land already owned by those countries to be divested.
In 2022, Utah universities also began shutting down Confucius institutes after Utah lawmakers raised national security concerns. Pierucci said they were “identified by the State Department and FBI as Chinese propaganda outlets.”
The governor’s office referred questions about the blocked land sale to the Department of Public Safety, which lawmakers tasked with maintaining a list of “restricted foreign entities,” creating a process for flagging land purchases by restricted countries, investigating purchases, and training local officials like county recorders to report land conveyances they suspect are prohibited.
Capt. Tanner Jensen, director of Utah Department of Public Safety’s statewide information and analysis center, told Utah News Dispatch on that public safety officials were notified of the attempted purchase earlier this year, in February and March, and “efforts were immediately stopped.”
Jensen said under state law, county recorders are required to notify the Department of Public Safety of “any suspicious activity surrounding foreign land purchase conducted by restricted entities.” In the case of the attempted Cirrus purchase, “the county recorders and the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity notified DPS,” he said.
Jensen said he was not immediately able to provide more information, including how many acres were set to be sold, where specifically the land was located in relation to the Provo Airport, and who was selling the land.
But he said the potential purchase in proximity of the Provo Airport was concerning because it could have been “strategic, economically” for the Chinese government, “and also strategic in the fact that aviation is a critical infrastructure.”
“Our federal, state, local law enforcement and homeland security efforts are focused on this type of activity, especially from China and some other nation state actors that are looking to compromise our freedoms and our security here,” Jensen said. “Land purchase is just one of many tactics that we’re concerned about.”
He added that public safety officials are also concerned about “surveillance, security compromises, intellectual property theft, (and) attacks on our democratic process by misinformation.”
“So this foreign land purchase is just one aspect of it,” he said. “But we do know that it’s a tactic that they use to gain control of our economy, to have influence over how our economy functions, and also gives foreign adversaries the ability to collect additional information on our security efforts here.”
To Pierucci, the blocked sale showed Utah laws are working.
“What was exciting about this stop of the transaction next to the Provo Airport was it was a county recorder who caught it, and it was because of the training, a direct result of the legislation that was passed and signed by Gov. Cox,” Pierucci said.
How much land in Utah is owned by China? Currently, Cox said it’s “very, very little.”
He said he wanted to set the record straight, noting that there have been some “really dumb maps that keep floating around the internet” that incorrectly showed “millions of acres of Utah” are owned by the Chinese government.
According to data recently released by the USDA, as of Dec. 31, 2023, about 33,000 acres in Utah had been owned by Chinese companies and investors, The Center Square reported.
Cox said “there are lots of different efforts, including here in Utah,” to categorize land owners and ensure “we don’t have those adversarial entities.” By most estimates, he said around 35,000 to 37,000 acres of land in Utah were owned by the Chinese government.
He emphasized the words “were owned.”
“Over the past few months, 35,000 acres of that has been divested and is no longer owned by the Chinese government,” he said. “So now we’re talking about a very, very, very small percentage. We will continue to investigate and we will continue to make sure that we are enforcing the law.”
Cox said the recent press conference “isn’t just about one deal.”
“It’s about protecting strategic land and ensuring foreign adversaries cannot gain a foothold in our state,” he said. “Other states might have let this slip through the cracks. Utah didn’t, and won’t.”
As of the end of 2023, USDA data showed about 45.8 million acres in the U.S.—a swath of land that, taken all together, would be larger than Washington state—belonged to foreign entities, The Center Square reported. It’s unclear where that figure stands today.
According to the governor’s office, other states are interested in Utah’s policies, which have also been “recognized as a national best practice by senior U.S. Department of Defense officials.” It also noted the Association of Defense Communities invited Utah to present at its national installations conference.
Pierucci said there’s more to come from the Utah Legislature, including legislation to “address Utah’s water vulnerabilities” and “put a stop to the CCP’s forced disclosures of our critical minerals in order for our Utah ranchers to sell their products to them.” She said lawmakers will also look to enhance the Department of Public Safety’s “tools and resources” to enforce all of these measures. — Katie McKellar, Utah News Dispatch
Republished under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. This version was condensed from its original length.
