Harriet Alexander reports,
A Chinese billionaire who has spent the last five years buying up 140,000 acres of rural Texas has been thwarted in his plan to build a massive wind farm, amid fears that it could be used by Beijing to hack into the Texas grid.
Sun Guangxin, 59, spent an estimated $110 million on the land in Val Verde, close to the border with Mexico. He wanted to build a 15,000 acre wind farm that included 46 turbines.
But his efforts were scotched after the land grab panicked Texas state politicians, who've now signed a bill into law banning foreigners like Sun from gaining access to 'critical infrastructure.'
Some Texas politicians even raised fears that the land, near Laughlin air force base, could house spy systems interfering with the military installations.
On June 7, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, signed the Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act - a bill which prevents business entities from 'hostile nations' from accessing the Texas grid and other pieces of 'critical infrastructure'.
Texas, unlike almost every other state, has its own electric grid, rather than relying on the national network - and in February the grid went down amid unusually heavy snowstorms.
Another vocal critic has been Kyle Bass, founder of Dallas-based hedge fund Hayman Capital Management, who has frequently raised concern about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party.
What is a former PLA [official] doing in the middle of nowhere Texas, next to our Air Force base and our border, trying to plug directly into our electric grid?' he said.
'Given the fragility of our grid that we've just seen, after the ice-pocalypse, I can't find any single person in the Texas legislature that thinks it's a good idea for a former Chinese [army captain] to plug directly into our power grid.'
REad more here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9885259/Secretive-Chinese-billionaire-buys-140-000-acres-Texas-wind-farm-blocked-governor.html
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