‘An intelligence and sabotage bonanza’: Chinese Communist intel official owns golf courses flanking U.S. nuclear missile nerve center

A Chinese intelligence official owns twin golf courses flanking the U.S. Air Force headquarters that controls two legs of the U.S. nuclear triad, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has discovered.

Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC), which is responsible for all of America’s intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombers, is hosted by Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, Louisiana. Approximately two miles to the north and south, the base is effectively bordered by The Golf Club At StoneBridge and its 27-hole, 340-acre sister, Olde Oaks Golf Club.

Since 2013, both courses have been owned by Eugene Ji, a Chinese-American businessman, who has held multiple Chinese government positions including serving as an official for an arm of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence and intelligence agency called the United Front Work Department (UFWD), according to local news reports, Louisiana business records and DCNF translations of Chinese government and university announcements.

“The matters you’re asking about are unrelated to StoneBridge or Olde Oaks Golf Course and we are not able to provide any comment,” Ji’s daughter, who is the general manager of both golf clubs, told the DCNF. “Our focus here is solely on golf operations and serving our members.”

Ji purchased the golf courses to provide a “networking opportunity for Chinese and American business people,” and to create a “platform” for “people-to-people diplomacy” with U.S. lawmakers, according to Chinese state media reports and a DCNF translation of Ji’s 2014 autobiography “New Circle.”

“Politicians and dignitaries, business friends, university presidents — all come to play golf,” Ji wrote in his book, according to a DCNF translation. “When senators and congressmen campaign, when governors and mayors hold gatherings, they all come to my golf club.”

However, customer reviews and local news reports have criticized the golf clubs’ conditions in recent years. One Google review characterized StoneBridge as a “dump,” while others have claimed nine holes have been “abandoned” by Olde Oaks, which the American Golfer blog listed as among the “worst” Louisiana golf courses in December 2025.

Ji’s ownership of the golf clubs and business activities, which appear centered on the Bayou State, pose a serious national security threat, lawmakers and Chinese intelligence experts told the DCNF.

“We spend billions of dollars on our bomber fleet. Chinese agents spend pennies on the dollar to put them in the crosshairs,” Jacqueline Deal, an advisory board member at State Armor, a nonprofit focused on countering the CCP, told the DCNF. “For the price of two apparently poorly-maintained courses, the CCP and the People’s Liberation Army have likely secured an intelligence and sabotage bonanza.” There have been no reported espionage incidents involving either of the golf courses.

Airmen train to confront “security threats posed by adversaries both at home and abroad” and the base is “prepared to respond to those threats when necessary,” a Barksdale AFB spokesman told the DCNF.

‘Leverage’

Ji, whose Chinese name is Ji Yueqin, is listed as an “overseas committee member” of the UFWD‘s All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC), according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and university announcements from as recently as 2024.

The UFWD’s operations are a “blend of engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations” that Beijing uses to steer foreign policy and “gain access to advanced foreign technology,” according to the House Select Committee on the CCP.

“Companies and individuals acting on behalf of the CCP have increasingly purchased land across the U.S., oftentimes adjacent to military installations and other sensitive sites,” Michigan Republican Rep. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, told the DCNF. “The time for sleepwalking past China’s spending spree on strategically vital land across the U.S. needs to end.”

Ji has attended numerous ACFROC meetings in China, including the UFWD arm’s September 2018 Beijing conference, according to ACFROC announcements and Chinese state media footage.

Since that conference, the Louisiana businessman has also met with ACFROC officials in Jiangsu and Shandong province, as well as within the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, according to DCNF translations of ACFROC announcements.

During those meetings, Ji agreed to support China’s economy in various ways, such as by serving as an “ambassador” to recruit talent for Shandong’s Jinan Start-Up Area, the ACFROC announcement states, according to a DCNF translation. This national development zone hosts centers focused on researching artificial intelligence, supercomputers and robotics, and is mandated to advance China’s Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) policy, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements. The CCP uses MCF to “ensure that new innovations simultaneously advance economic and military development,” according to a 2020 U.S. State Department memo.

“United Front operations rarely look hostile — they build relationships, normalize their presence, embed in local communities, and wait, subtly conducting the CCP’s work abroad, like recruiting,” L.J. Eads, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, told the DCNF.

“This isn’t a businessman who happens to own a golf course. This is a CCP political actor highlighted in Chinese government publications,” Eads said, citing ACFROC’s announcements. “If a CCP-linked network controls the social economic nodes around a nuclear-mission base, that is leverage Beijing can weaponize in a moment of tension.”

‘No Coincidences’

Ji has held Chinese government positions on and off for more than 40 years, and has used his foothold in Louisiana to introduce CCP delegations to the state, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements.

Ji first began working for the Chinese government in 1981, when he was assigned to the Guizhou Provincial Economic and Trade Department, according to a DCNF translation of “New Circle,” and a 2024 interview conducted by his alma mater, Guizhou University.

Over the next seven years, the Chinese government dispatched Ji on a series of trade missions to Guangzhou, Europe, Japan and the U.S., until he quit his post in June 1989 and moved to America to pursue his graduate degree in economics at New York University, according to DCNF translations of the 2024 interview and his autobiography.

Later that year, Ji dropped out of NYU and began working for the Chinese government again, according to a DCNF translation of his 2024 interview.

“After a Chinese grain-buying delegation’s interpreter fell ill in New York, a friend introduced me to fill in, so I led the delegation to Louisiana where we met the governor, the agriculture commissioner, and the commerce secretary,” Ji said, according to a DCNF translation of the interview. “Because of that, the governor let me stay, so I stayed in Louisiana.”

Over the course of the delegation’s 20-day U.S. visit, the Chinese government paid Ji a salary of $300 an hour and also provided him with formal clothing, according to a DCNF translation of his autobiography.

Ji has continued to serve as a liaison between China and the Deep South in the intervening years, with local news outlet KTBS reporting in 2013 that Ji had been responsible for attracting “nearly all” of Louisiana’s Chinese investors.

“I once again feel profoundly that intense longing deep inside me, that voice buried deep in my heart that has never faded: I want to do all that I possibly can to make a real difference for China’s core interests,” Ji wrote in his autobiography, according to a DCNF translation.

In one instance, Ji’s film company partnered with Beijing Film Academy and Hunan TV to produce Chinese programs and establish a film training center in Baton Rouge, Chinese state media reported in December 2015. Both Beijing Film Academy and Hunan TV are state-owned entities overseen by China’s Propaganda Department, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements.

In another instance, Ji inked a deal with a delegation from the State Council‘s China Federation Of Industrial Economics (CFIE) in June 2018 to establish a joint office in Baton Rouge, according to DCNF translations of CFIE announcements. The joint office supports China’s Belt And Road Initiative, which is a CCP infrastructure and economic strategy that the U.S. State Department warns was created to collect intelligence and gain “political, military, and economic leverage over participating countries through the accrual and manipulation of debt.”

The 2018 delegation was led by CFIE’s party secretary, Xiong Meng, who has held key MCF positions, such as serving as the head of the MCF Innovation Working Group within “China’s Silicon Valley,” according to DCNF translations of Chinese government, state media and university announcements.

The CCP is sending agents to the U.S. in order to gather intelligence on military bases in preparation for war, Deal warned.

“Since its founding, the CCP has employed infiltration, co-option, and subversion before attacking its enemies kinetically. To this end, the party has waged a long-running campaign of prepositioning political-warfare and intelligence assets inside the U.S.,” Deal said. “Like an RV park, a golf club offers abundant opportunities for intelligence collection on aircraft and operators alike, as well as for storing materiel in advance of an attack. How many takeoffs and landings have been observed? How many personnel have been logged and monitored on the base or on the greens?”

The DCNF reported in November 2025 on the existence of a foreign-owned trailer park linked to a convicted fraudster with CCP intelligence ties, which shares a fence with Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force Base, home to the “world’s only nuclear capable stealth bomber.”

Federal authorities need to investigate Ji, author and China expert Gordon Chang told the DCNF.

“Here we have someone connected to the Chinese regime owning land under an approach to one of the most important Air Force bases in the American homeland,” Chang said. “What more warning signs do we need?”

“If war starts, [AFGSC] has to assume that every B-52 at Barksdale will be destroyed,” Chang warned. “We need to investigate this guy, because when it comes to China, we should assume that there are no coincidences.”

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