His Oregon timberland holdings span 198,000 acres (80,127 hectares), placing Chen Tianqiao as the 82nd-largest property proprietor in the country, per the most recent Land Report ranking.
In 2015, Chen, aged 50, paid $85 million to Fidelity National Financial Ventures for the acreage. The beneficial owner was identified in Oregon tax documents as Shanda Asset Management, the same name as Chen’s Singapore-based holding entity, as of last month.
His Oregon property ranks among the largest private proprietors of land in the United States held by a non-citizen. More Maine timberland is owned by the Irving family of Canada, which ranks sixth on the Land Report’s list with over 1.2 million acres.
The matter of foreign ownership of agricultural land in the United States has emerged as a contentious political concern in recent times. According to the latest data from the Department of Agriculture, non-US entities owned approximately 40 million acres of American agricultural land as of 2021. Notably, Chinese entities possessed the equivalent of 0.03% of all US farmland.
National regulations that restrict foreign investment in American agricultural property have been advocated by a number of legislators. In July, the Senate passed a resolution prohibiting the sale of farmland to individuals or organizations from China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea in excess of a specified acreage or value. However, the bill did not reach the desk of the Senate. Approximately 50% of states impose some form of limitation on foreign ownership.
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Chen, a native of Zhejiang Province, established Shanda Interactive, an online gaming company, in 1999. It attained Nasdaq listing in the United States and emerged as one of the largest internet companies in China within a span of five years. Chen went private with the company in 2012 and relocated the headquarters of his holding group from China to Singapore.
