Oklahoma GOP senator sounds alarm over China's farmland purchases: US must 'pay attention'

Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford is spotlighting an unprecedented national security breach that has seemingly gone overlooked by the Biden administration.

EXPERTS SOUND ALARM OVER CHINA BUYING US LAND NEAR MILITARY BASES: 'CHILLING'

Over 1 million acres of Oklahoma farmland are currently owned by foreign entities, and nations like China are, according to Lankford, "100%" using the land for drug production.

"These are Chinese criminal organizations that are moving in, and you're not going to move in and move that much money without some awareness of the Chinese Communist Party and setting up. Just in the last year, China has doubled the number of acres that it has in the United States. They're buying up hundreds of thousands of acres across the country, and they're moving in criminal operations into the country," the senator explained during an appearance on "Mornings with Maria."

Foreign purchases of U.S. farmland have become an especially hot-button issue in the wake of the Chinese spy balloon that the U.S. shot down last month after crossing from Alaska to South Carolina. The surveillance aircraft's dayslong flight across the country re-energized concerns among experts and lawmakers over China's ongoing efforts to buy land across the U.S., with some voices observing a pattern of suspected espionage activities near American military sites. 

"We've got to be attentive to what China is currently trying to do in our country."

- Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla.

Lankford is fighting to fix the "gap in federal law" regarding foreign entities' ability to openly purchase agricultural land, and urging his fellow lawmakers to "be attentive" to what China is currently trying to do on American soil.

In the Wednesday morning segment, host Maria Bartiromo asked the Oklahoma senator, "What are we doing as a country to stop communist China from moving forward on all of these goals to overtake the United States as the number one superpower?"

Lankford replied, assuring Americans that the U.S. is tackling the problem "piece by piece."

FARMLAND BECOMES FLASHPOINT IN US-CHINA RELATIONS

"We've got to be able to do our military work. We've got to make sure that we have what's called 'hard power' on this, to be able to make it very clear that we are the United States of America, and we're none to be trifled with," he continued. 

"The second thing that we've got to do is deal with economic issues. Every corporation in America needs to look at the business that it's doing currently with China. If their supply chain comes from China to the United States, know that the communist nation will at some point cut that off. And so they need to be attentive to that in all of their investment strategies and all of their logistics tail — that if they have China anywhere in that logistics tail, that's a major problem."

"We've got to take world leadership back again, and to be able to say we're the United States in foreign policy and in economic power," urged Lankford.

Fox News' Aaron Kliegman contributed to this report.