Jason Yuan, a second-hand car shop owner, tightens the final nut on a battery terminal, a task he performs with practiced ease. For Yuan, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in China, Texas has long been home. However, a recently enacted state law is challenging his sense of belonging.
Texas Senate Bill 17, or SB 17, slated to take effect on September 1, 2025, restricts individuals and companies from China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia from purchasing or renting property within the state.
State officials assert the bill is necessary to safeguard national security. But for individuals like Yuan, it conveys a message of discrimination, suggesting that those of similar heritage are not welcome in Texas.
Texas Representative Gene Wu, a Democrat leading the opposition to the bill, stated, “It is anti-Asian, anti-immigrant, and specifically against Chinese-Americans.”
Speaking to the BBC, Wu warned that the new law could negatively impact businesses in Texas, as companies considering substantial investments in the state seek opportunities elsewhere.
SB 17, proposed earlier this year, was signed into law on June 20 by Governor Greg Abbott, who described it as the “toughest ban in America” aimed at preventing foreign “adversaries” from acquiring property.
The law prohibits certain individuals and organizations from countries designated as national security threats from acquiring property in Texas, including residential, commercial, and agricultural land. It also limits the duration for which they can rent property to less than one year.
China is the first country named in the legislation, which accuses Beijing of employing “coercive, subversive, and malignant influence activities to weaken the United States” in its pursuit of economic, military, and political dominance.
Violators of the law could face fines exceeding $250,000 (£193,000) or imprisonment.
While U.S. citizens and green card holders are exempt, and valid visa holders are permitted to own one primary residence, critics argue that the bill is inherently discriminatory and could subject anyone perceived as Chinese to unfair scrutiny.
In July, the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance (Calda), a non-profit organization, filed a lawsuit on behalf of three visa holders from China, arguing that the law is unconstitutional.
The judge subsequently dismissed the case, siding with the state attorney general, who argued that the plaintiffs—student-visa and work-visa holders residing in Texas—would not be directly affected by the law.
Although the three plaintiffs appear to be spared for the time being, the lack of clarity in the legal clauses continues to fuel uncertainty for the broader group of visa holders from the four countries. Calda has filed an appeal.
Chinese nationals constitute the largest group affected by the new law. As of 2023, at least 120,000 individuals born in mainland China resided in Texas.
Qinlin Li, a recent graduate of Texas A&M University and a plaintiff in the lawsuit against SB 17, expressed shock upon learning about the bill.
“If there’s no human rights, then we [are] back to like 150 years ago, we were like the railroad labourers,” Ms. Li stated.
Li resided in a rented apartment in a quiet residential area in an Austin suburb. Consumed by her work and the lawsuit, she did not have time to search for a new apartment that met her needs until two weeks before her lease was set to expire.
She was in the midst of moving when the lawsuit was dismissed. Although the court ruling indicated that she was not affected by the law, she said the entire process had taken a toll on her mental health.
“I think it’s going to block people from studying here and working here because it’s a lot of trouble just to think about it,” Ms. Li said.
Jason Yuan has dedicated his time outside of his car shop to community activism. Prior to the bill’s passage, he led rallies outside the Texas capital and testified at a public hearing, arguing that the new land bill should be termed “the Chinese Exclusion Act of 2025.”
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a law fueled by anti-Chinese sentiment, barred the immigration of Chinese laborers into the U.S.
“Banning homeownership from folks just like me based on their country of origin, that is discriminatory in nature,” Yuan told the BBC.
Yuan expressed concern about the future for his two children, with his 13-year-old son standing behind him when he spoke at a recent rally.
“I told everybody this is all worth it,” Yuan said. “In the future, I would tell my kids when you face some discrimination, when somebody picks on you, this is a way to push back.”
As a small business owner, Yuan also worries about the bill’s financial impact, as at least one-third of his clients are Chinese immigrants.
“It’s an ecosystem that the business owners of the Chinese community depend on,” he said.
In addition to small businesses, transnational companies from China could be directly affected by the bill.
Between 2011 and 2021, 34 Chinese companies recorded 38 investment projects, $2.7 billion in capital investment, and 4,682 jobs in Texas, according to a report by state officials.
Some Chinese companies are now reportedly seeking alternatives to Texas.
Nancy Lin, a commercial estate agent based in Dallas, told the BBC that several prospective Chinese clients she has spoken to are pausing their investment plans, including some in the electric vehicle and solar panel sectors.
“If this issue can’t be resolved, I think it will be more difficult for Chinese companies to enter Texas. As for those that already have existing leases, they can’t renew them. If they do, it can only be for no more than one year.”
The right to own land has been a struggle for Chinese-Americans for over a century.
A previous alien land law in Texas, which restricted non-U.S. citizens from purchasing land, was in force until 1965. It was deemed “unreasonable and discriminatory” and detrimental to “economic development.”
Abbott maintains that his top priority is the safety and security of Texans.
When asked for comment by the BBC, his office referred to previous statements on the matter, including a press release that stated that “hostile foreign adversaries,” including China, “must not be allowed to own land in Texas.”
Chuck DeVore, from the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, was among those who spoke in favor of the bill, emphasizing the need to “keep hostile regimes away from our military bases, farmland, and infrastructure, like Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas, or the ranches feeding our state.”
The legislative effort was partly prompted by Chinese businessman Sun Guangxin’s controversial purchase of 140,000 acres of land in Texas for a wind farm between 2016 and 2018, including land near Laughlin Air Force Base.
Although initially approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Texas passed a law in 2021 prohibiting agreements with certain foreign-owned companies in “critical infrastructure,” and Sun’s project was thwarted.
Texas Senator John Cornyn stated in 2024 that, as a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and a former senior leader in the Chinese military, Sun likely had other concerning surveillance plans on behalf of the Chinese government.
Sun refuted such claims. A 2024 lawsuit filed by one of his business subsidiaries highlighted that U.S. officials had taken mitigation measures and cleared the project from national security concerns.
A survey conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, gathered 224 espionage cases against the U.S. from China from 2000-2023 from open sources.
National security experts have suggested that CCP-related threats to the U.S. have grown in recent years.
“The risk is real,” Holden Triplett, former head of the FBI office in Beijing, told the BBC.
“Targeting the US at the sub-national level has increasingly become a trend in intelligence. The individuals and groups at that level tend to be less aware of the risks and more likely to establish relationships,” Triplett stated.
However, Patrick Toomey, from the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation (ACLU), argued that, in the case of SB 17, some officials were wrongly equating Chinese people with the Chinese government.
“There is no evidence that harm to national security has resulted from Chinese people owning or leasing residential properties in Texas,” he said.
Experts also question the necessity of Texas’s new law from a regulatory standpoint. Sarah Bauerle Danzman, from the Atlantic Council think tank, suggested that it would be preferable for the federal government to handle such matters to avoid overlapping jurisdictions.
SB 17 is not the first bill of its kind in the U.S.
According to the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American non-governmental organization, twenty-six states, most of them Republican-controlled, have passed 50 bills restricting foreign property ownership targeting China since 2021.
Most of the state laws were passed since 2023, the same year that a Chinese spy balloon flew across North American airspace, in an incident that marked a new low for U.S.-China ties.
The Trump administration has also stated its intention to ban Chinese nationals from buying farmland in the U.S.
“Texas’s law should sound alarm bells,” Toomey said, adding that the legislation weaponized false claims of national security against Asian immigrants and other communities.
Yuan believes that if Chinese-Americans do not put up a fight, the new law in Texas could lead to similar bills being passed in other states.
Ohio, for example, is considering a ban against “adversarial countries,” but with a stricter scope that could include green card holders as well. Activists have been rallying against it.
“They’re trying to rewrite the rules of democracy,” Yuan says, “but there is still a chance we could change the course.”
“Otherwise, the U.S. will become much more like China.”
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