Gov. Greg Abbott’s reelection campaign has put up billboards across Texas saying his Democratic opponent, Gina Hinojosa, “wants to let China buy Texas land.” He’s also issued a press release claiming she wants “Communist China to be your neighbor.” But Abbott himself has accepted $55,000 from executives and employees of a Houston developer that partners with companies marketing Texas homes to Chinese investors, according to records from the Texas Ethics Commission reviewed by Courier Texas.
Between 2018 and 2024, three people listed as working at Sueba Inc. gave Abbott’s campaign eight donations, according to the records. Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer John Chiang gave Abbott $15,000 between 2022 and 2024. Vice President Douglas Bergen gave a total of $20,000 from 2018 to 2020, and John Leonard, listed as a developer, gave $20,000 between 2019 and 2021.
The donations put Abbott in a position similar to that of Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for US Senate, whose campaign has faced scrutiny for the same kind of contributions. Both men have made Chinese land ownership a central campaign issue.
Sueba works with Wan Bridge, a US-based real estate company whose Chinese-language website is aimed at investors, according to a Houston Chronicle investigation published last week. In it, the Chronicle shows homes the company built in Houston, Austin, and Dallas that investors appear to be able to buy and then rent out to tenants. Wan Bridge’s partnership page lists Sueba as a senior consultant on its development project Ivy Green.
Sueba also works with AMG, which the Chronicle described as a US subsidiary of a Chinese company connected to the Chinese Communist Party. Sueba is one of AMG’s major partners on its Ivy Green project in Houston, handling apartment construction.
The Chronicle reported Paxton’s campaign took in $40,000 from donors who work for companies that facilitate foreign investment in Texas real estate. That includes Wan Bridge’s co-founders and Chiang, who has given Paxton a total of $15,000 over the years. The Chronicle noted Chiang has also given to other Republicans at the state level, including Abbott.
Abbott’s total donations receiver from Sueba employees is larger, though his donors work at the development partner rather than at Wan Bridge itself, and their contributions span six years.
Abbott has made foreign ownership of Texas land a centerpiece of his reelection bid. In 2025, he signed a law—Senate Bill 17—barring governments and entities tied to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea from owning land in Texas. His campaign says the new billboards highlight Hinojosa’s opposition to that legislation. At the Republican midterm convention in Dallas this month, Abbott touted the law from the stage.
All of the donations predate the law.
Greg Abbott’s broader focus on immigrants and Muslim Texans, Chinese
The land law is one piece of a broader set of actions Abbott has taken targeting foreign workers and Muslim Texans.
In January, Abbott froze new H-1B visa petitions at state agencies and public universities through May 2027. The program is used disproportionately by workers from India. Business groups warned the freeze would make Texas less competitive, and researchers said it could stall cancer research.
He has also designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group, as a terrorist organization, and has highlighted that designation on the campaign trail and from the midterm convention stage in Dallas.
In May, he threatened to pull $530,000 in state funding from Grand Prairie unless the city canceled a private Eid al-Adha celebration at a city-owned water park. In August, he asked the US Department of Justice to investigate foot-washing stations for Muslim travelers at airports in Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston. And at the Dallas convention, he joined other top Texas Republicans in denouncing Islam and promising to “fully ban Sharia law.”
Abbott has also declined to directly condemn Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas Railroad Commissioner, after French posted a photo of University of Texas students, most of them of South Asian descent, and called it evidence of Americans being displaced by foreigners.
Hinojosa’s response to Greg Abbott
Hinojosa, speaking at a Courier Texas event in Houston on Sept. 22, said state leaders are “punching down at Texans because they’re trying to distract from their failed record.”
“With one hand, they divide us into groups to blame one group a week for the problems and the struggles we experience in this state, and their other hand is in our pocket,” she said.
Abbott’s billboards could be said to be part of this playbook, but point to Hinojosa’s vote against SB 17 in 2025. She was among the Democrats who opposed the bill in a House vote that fell almost entirely along party lines.
Opponents said the final version reached well beyond its original target. The bill was written to bar land purchases by governments, companies, and people tied to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, but a House amendment let the governor add countries to the list.
US Senate nominee James Talarico, who also voted no, has faced the same attack from Paxton, and has punched back in ads after last week’s reporting by the Chronicle, which also revealed Paxton took an all-expenses paid 10-day trip to China. A spokesperson said Talarico voted against the final version to avoid giving the governor more power.
Others have objected to the law on civil rights grounds. At a Fort Bend County town hall in July, Democratic lawmakers and community organizers said the law echoes the alien land laws of the early 20th century, which barred Chinese and other Asian immigrants from owning property.
House Democratic Leader Gene Wu said the land law and other recent policies were “the same attack and for the same reasons” as those earlier restrictions.
Hinojosa is trying to become the first Democrat elected statewide in Texas since 1994.
Election Day is Nov. 3.
