(Bloomberg) — A Chinese man who made a fortune playing online games has emerged as one of the most important non-American landowners in the United States.
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Chen Tianqiao owns 198,000 acres (80,127 hectares) of forest land in Oregon, making him the 82nd largest real estate owner in the United States, according to Land Report’s latest rankings.
Mr. Chen, 50, acquired the land from Fidelity National Financial Ventures in 2015 for $85 million. Oregon tax records last month revealed the beneficial owner’s name as Shanda Asset Management, the same name as Mr. Chen’s Singapore-based holding company.
His Oregon assets make him one of the largest private owners of land in the United States by a non-American individual. Only Canada’s Irving family, which owns more than 1.2 million acres of forested land in Maine and ranks sixth on the Land Report list, owns more land.
Foreign ownership of U.S. land, particularly land used for agriculture, has become a sensitive political issue in recent years. As of 2021, approximately 40 million acres of U.S. farmland were owned by non-U.S. interests, with Chinese companies owning 0.03% of all U.S. farmland, according to the latest data from the Department of Agriculture. ing.
Some lawmakers are pushing for domestic rules to limit foreign investment in U.S. agricultural property. In July, the Senate passed a resolution banning the sale of agricultural land beyond a certain area or value to people or companies from China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea, but the bill was ultimately not signed into law. Almost half of all states have some kind of restriction on foreign ownership.
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Originally from Zhejiang province, Chen founded online gaming company Shanda Interactive in 1999. Within five years the company became one of China’s largest Internet companies and was listed on the US NASDAQ. Mr. Chen took the company private in 2012 and moved his holding group’s headquarters from China to Singapore.
According to Shanda’s website, his investments span public and private equity, venture capital and real estate. He and his wife, Chrissy Luo, initially raised $115 million to establish the Tianchao Chrissy Chen Neuroscience Institute at California Institute of Technology in 2016, with the mission of advancing understanding of the brain. donated dollars.
Ultra-wealthy investors seeking an inflation hedge and uncorrelated assets have increasingly flocked to farmland and other rural real estate in recent years. The average price of farmland in the U.S. rose 8.1% last year and is up more than a third since 2020, according to the USDA.
This profit is driven not only by food demand and high inflation, but also by interest in rare real estate, such as classic western ranches, that offer the potential for recreation and investment returns.
The country’s largest landowners are the Emerson family, owners of the forestry empire Sierra Pacific Industries, followed by billionaires John Malone, Ted Turner and Stan Kroenke.
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