Recent reports in the right-leaning press in the United States claim that China is escalating purchases of American farms. This drumbeat is partly in support of the proposed Promoting Agriculture Safeguards and Security (PASS) act. The bipartisan measure would block investments in U.S. agriculture from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
We were struck by the similarity with an earlier, very similar panic about Chinese land grabs in Africa, which was debunked by the Africa-China expert Deborah Brautigam in her book Will Africa Feed China?
