“Don’t Mess With Texas” is the message to a Chinese billionaire who recently bought 280 square miles of land next to a strategic US air force base in Del Rio, Texas near the Mexico border.

The Morning Star Ranch owner, Sun Guangxin, has been claiming it’s for a turbine wind and solar farm, but the property has a 4,000 to 5,000-foot runway which he planned to expand.

The Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act, passed by theTexas legislature halted the plans of Guangxin, a former Chinese military official.

The act prevents companies controlled by China, Russia, Iran or North Korea, or one of their citizens, to tie in to critical power, cyber security, communications, hazardous waste or water treatment facilities.

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“The Chinese Communist Party believes any China citizen whatever property they have is also their property,” State Senator Donna Campbell of New Braunfels said.“The bill serves to protect our critical infrastructure from countries that are hostile to us.”

Campbell called it another “trojan horse” for China to access and control access to the power network.

Present Danger: China

Kyle Bass, founder and principal of Hayman Capital Management and a founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China doesn’t mince words when he describes what he learned.

“Just think about that for a second, 200 square miles of property. We have a Chinese general who owns two-thirds of the real estate in the capital of Xinjiang where the concentration camps are for the ethnic Uyghurs. And he now owns 200 square miles of Texas land between one of our most active Air Force bases and the border of the U.S. and Mexico,” Bass explained.

Bass said there is a “4,000 or 5,000-foot runway there where the Chinese general is expanding it to, we think, 10,000 feet. This is happening inside the United States, and this general is actually interfacing directly with the critical infrastructure of the United States. My view and this is my view only, not our country view yet, but my view is the reason that he bought the wind farm and wants to put up 700-foot turbines is he plugs directly into our electric grid.”

Bass continued: “Plugging directly into our electric grid is something that should never happen. Whether you’re a Chinese general or a North Korean general or an Iranian general or a Russian general, you should be precluded from buying property next to our busiest Air Force training base and plugging directly into our grid.”

Lucifer Morning Star

Bass was concerned about the property being named Morning Star Ranch.

“And if you remember in the Bible, the devil’s name is Lucifer Morning Star,” he said. “And you should see the obtuse star that denotes the landmark of this ranch. Again, it’s almost made for TV fiction. You couldn’t make this up if you try.”

Bass said he investigated and “realized that on a scale of 1 to 10, the wind assets in that region of the United States and Southern Texas is like between 2 and 3 out of 10. And if you and I were investing and buying big wind turbines and wanted to put them somewhere, we’d look for two things. We would look for major wind factors. And then we’d also look for transmission equipment to be able to transmit it somewhere to sell it. We would never build a wind farm where this one is.”

There is a strategic reason a former PLA general would acquire all of this land, “and he did it again in an insidious way,” Bass said. “He got a local businessman out of Lufkin, Texas to front for him and purchase all the properties. So none of the landowners knew they were selling to a Chinese general. And then in all one fell swoop, they flipped it to the general.”

Sun Guangxin’s two closest advisers “are also ex-PLA generals. He runs 40 local branches of the CCP, grassroots branches. We’ve done some investigations into this General Sun. And again, it’s hard to believe but it’s happening,” Bass said. “And when you see this runway expansion, you wonder why on earth? It looks like one of those runways on the islands of the South China Sea, all the islands that China claimed they would never militarize. Xi Jinping said to President Obama, ‘We’ll never militarize those islands.’ The next thing you know, they’ve got missile batteries and fighter jets and bombers on these 10,000-foot runways.”

Angering Texans

Texans have been upset that the state even allows foreign entities to purchase property or businesses in the United States, much less the Lone Star State.

“We should not even let them have half an acre–none–much less 140,000 acres,” Ken Carta, a Val Verde resident declared.

At first local property owners were infuriated when the news spread about the purchase.

“It wasn’t until they organized with conservationists concerned about national security and destruction to the Devil’s River did we gain momentum,” Carta said. “We’ve had enough foreign actors trying to mess with our ERCOT power and electric power grids.”

Guangxin’s company, GH America, a subsidiary of his Guanghui Energy Company deemed it “The Blue Hills Wind Farm.” 

“There are foreign actors, as we’ve seen recently with the gas pipeline hack, that have ill intent for our country and our critical infrastructure,” said Julie Lewey with the Devil’s River Conservancy.

Opponents say GH America intended to install extraordinarily high 700-foot wind turbines in an area not particularly known for high winds, and where pilots from Laughlin Air Force Base fly.

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