I confess I don’t get it. If alfalfa is more valuable in China, why not just buy it at hay auctions like everybody else? Would growing it under contract to ship to China be OK? America’s a big place. Lots of foreigners own American farms, mostly Brits and Dutch, at least as of a few years ago.
I think the article tries to twist the citizenship issue a bit. I don’t see where Zhang’s is told but his Chinese partner, Simon, is an American citizen. Later in the article it refers matter of factly to the farm being a ‘chinese company.’ Which is a different issue in that, unlike the Brits or whomever else, there is no chinese company the chinese government isn’t a partner to.(And I have no clue what taxes a chinese company would pay to the US govt). Or maybe the reporter was wrong and it’s an American company beholding to the IRS. But since the McKee comment of America for Americans was raised in the article, I thought I’d throw it out there, too.