- Sun Guangxin, a Chinese real estate tycoon, has since 2016 spent an estimated $110 million buying up land in Val Verde County in Texas
- Worth an estimated $2.1 billion, according to Forbes, Sun has bought 140,000 acres of Texan land near the U.S.-Mexico border, by Laughlin air force base
- Sun has set aside 15,000 acres to build a wind farm which would feed into Texas' power grid
- His actions have raised eyebrows, given his close ties to Communist party officials in Urumqi - home to the persecuted Uighur minority
- It has also triggered claims Sun could equip the turbines with spying equipment, or even let China hold Texas's power grid to ransom
- Environmentalists were concerned about the impact of a wind farm on the Devils River ecosystem, 'considered one of the last wild and pristine rivers in Texas'
- On June 7 Governor Greg Abbott signed into law the Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act
- The bill is designed to stop business entities associated with 'hostile nations' from accessing the Texas grid and other pieces of 'critical infrastructure'
|