Iowa farmers: Stop China from undermining U.S. agriculture

From seed theft to missile defense, members of Iowa’s Republican congressional delegation said the United States needs to be more direct and confrontational in curbing Chinese aggression undermining U.S. agriculture, trade, innovation and food security.

The Bastion Institute hosted a Thursday roundtable discussion at the Cedar Rapids Country Club by three Republicans — U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst and U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, both of Iowa, and U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin — on the United States’ relationship with China

Gallagher and Hinson currently serve on the House Committee to assess the myriad military, economic and technological challenges posed by China.

Ernst and Gallagher also sponsored legislation to develop “rings-of-fire” in the Indo-Pacific to deter Chinese aggression in the region. The bill would require the Pentagon to develop a strategy for offsetting China's ballistic and cruise missiles that can hit U.S. targets across the Indo-Pacific.

Gallagher said the United States can deploy missiles across the region with the support of partners and allies like Japan and the Philippines. Both countries could host shorter-range systems, while longer-range systems could be deployed to northern Australia, the Pacific islands and Alaska.

That positioning, he said, would establish "rings of fire" that constitute a missile-defense across the Pacific to counter China and its aggressive nature.

“This isn’t just a distant over-there threat,” Gallagher said. “It isn’t a matter a some obscure territorial claim in the South China Sea. It’s a right-here-at-home threat. And you don’t need a Chinese spy balloon to remind you of the threat to American sovereignty.”

China’s theft of technology

Hinson, Gallagher and House Select China Committee Ranking Member Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., hosted a roundtable event afterward in Dysart, in Tama County, on the Chinese Communist Party's agricultural technology theft.

The event featured Iowa farmers and stakeholders who discussed the impacts of Chinese malign tactics to undermine American agriculture.

A Chinese national pleaded guilty in 2016 in federal court to conspiring to steal trade secrets involving inbred corn seeds produced by DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto.

In 2011, a Dysart farmer spotted a man, Mo Hailong, in business attire digging up valuable hybrid seeds, which he then sent back to China. The FBI ultimately arrested Mo Hailong and six accomplices after they stole $30 million worth of U.S. ag technology.

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Since then, the FBI has investigated other cases, and the Department of Justice has secured additional convictions.

Last year, Chinese national Xiang Haitao pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit economic espionage and was sentenced to more than two years in prison for stealing a central algorithm to a software platform being developed by his employer, a Monsanto subsidiary, for farmers to visualize and analyze field data.

Xiang took copies of the algorithm on a one-way flight back to China, where he later worked for the Chinese Academy of Science’s Institute of Soil Science.

Xiang was sentenced to 29 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release and a $150,000 fine.

“ (O)ur land is sacred. Feeding and fueling the world is ingrained in who we are,” Hinson said. “We cannot allow the (Chinese Communist Party) to continue stealing our intellectual property, buying up our farmland, and ripping off our farmers and rural manufacturers.

“ … We cannot sit idly by any longer. The status quo is too dangerous to maintain,” Hinson said.

The FBI has estimated the annual cost to the U.S. economy of counterfeit goods, pirated software and theft of trade secrets and intellectual property as between $225 billion and $600 billion, with China as the “world’s principal infringer.”

“ (I)t uses its laws and regulations to put foreign companies at a disadvantage and its own companies at an advantage,” according to the FBI.

China’s food security

China is the world’s largest importer of corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and dairy products.

Gallagher connected Chinese President Xi Jinping’s heightened focus on food security with his increasing aggression toward Taiwan, speculating that if the Chinese Communist Party precipitates conflict in the Taiwan Strait, global seaborne trade will be disrupted and, therefore, securing grain supplies will be essential.

“Our farms are more than just places to grow food,” Gallagher said. “They are research laboratories … and strategic national resources. We have to protect all our technology, whether it’s in a Silicon Valley research lab or an Iowa cornfield.”

He said the United States needs to “plug the holes” in its technological ecosystem with export controls, enhanced investment screening, and outbound capital restrictions.

“Our country is filled with invisible factories and invisible farms — those that would have been built or planted here if we’d protected American technology,” Gallagher said. “There are invisible paychecks — those that our workers and farmers would have gotten if we weren’t sending $600 billion to our foremost global adversary every year in stolen IP and trade secrets.

“Just like the farmer in the Iowa field, we are being robbed every day, in plain sight, by the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “Today, we are here today to discuss how we stop that.”

Caution urged

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Suzanne Shirbroun, who grows soybeans and corn with her husband and sons near Farmersburg in Clayton County, said the U.S. government needs to “fairly, but firmly combat unfair trade practices” imposed by China.

“Such acts should not be tolerated and should be contested,” Shirbroun said, but cautioned that the U.S. proceed cautiously — and not revoke China’s most-favored-nation trade status — noting one in every three rows of soybeans in the United States goes to China.

“While there is little doubt that China has targeted United State intellectual property and engaged in unfair trade practices … there is not another market that can completely replace the Chinese market for the American soybean farmer,” Shirbroun said.

Instead, she said, the United States needs to diversity its export market to other countries, especially in Southeast Asia, to boost the U.S. farm economy and lessen its dependence on China.

She said Congress and the Biden administration should work to:

Lori Lang, who farms 25 miles southwest of Dysart, also called for stricter scrutiny of Chinese investment in U.S. agriculture by federal regulators and the Justice Department — something Hinson and other members of Iowa’s congressional delegation have pushed.

The debate over farm ownership has intensified as Chinese firms over the past decade have purchased major agribusinesses, like pork processing giant Smithfield Foods. It also comes amid broader efforts by Congress and the Biden administration to curb the United States’ reliance on China in key industries critical to the nation’s supply chain.

“You have something special here in Iowa, and people want to copy that,” said Krishnamoorthi, the Illinois Democrat. “But I don’t think they can ever copy you, if we are vigilant about our secrets, our research” and protecting free enterprise.

“We can’t be anything but vigilant because we are in a global competition,” he said. “This is a competition that will determine our standard of living, our children’s standard of living, for generations.”

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com

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