A U.S. electric vehicle battery manufacturer with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has suspended its permit application to build a plant near a Michigan National Guard base following fierce opposition.
Chuck Thelen, CEO of Gotion Inc. — a “wholly owned and controlled” subsidiary of Chinese company Hefei Gotion High-Tech Power Energy Co. Ltd. (Gotion High-Tech) — said the decision stemmed from the firm’s ongoing breach of contract lawsuit against Green Charter Township, according to the Big Rapids Pioneer. The township soured on the $2.4 billion project in November 2023 after voters recalled numerous officials following a series of reports revealing Gotion and its Chinese parent company’s ties to the CCP.
“I applaud the people of Mecosta County as Gotion pauses their permitting process, but their fight is not over,” Republican Michigan Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Gotion must announce it will finally listen to the people, and end its projects for good.”
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Questions about Gotion’s CCP-ties began to arise around March 2023 when The Midwesterner reported Gotion High-Tech’s “Articles of Association” required the firm to establish a “Party organization and carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China.”
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The House Select Committee on the CCP investigated Gotion High-Tech in 2024 and “found their supply chains are reliant on forced labor as part of the CCP’s ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province,” Mooleenaar told the DCNF.
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Meanwhile, Michigan residents — like Joseph Cella, the director of the Michigan-China Economic and Security Review Group — engaged in grassroots activism to oppose the CCP-tied company. Cella served as the U.S. Ambassador to Fiji during the first Trump administration.
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“[They] refused to follow the directives given to state and local governments on dealings with China-based companies to exercise vigilance, conduct due diligence, and ensure transparency, integrity, and accountability are built into the partnership to guard against potential foreign government exploitation,” Cella said. “It is important that executive branch agencies, Congress, the Michigan Legislature, and citizens continue to scrutinize and investigate this ‘deal.’”
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It’s just not very credible. US police also kill and hospitalize more people than Chinese police. US politicians have no room to criticize any other country’s law enforcement.
LMFAO you aren’t the slightest bit credible. Just in this one region alone the Chinese dictatorship threw in jail 1 million people none of whom were criminals.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037
[China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur population and other mostly-Muslim ethnic groups in the north-western region of Xinjiang.
Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls “re-education camps”, and sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms.
A series of police files obtained by the BBC in 2022 has revealed details of China’s use of these camps and described the routine use of armed officers and the existence of a shoot-to-kill policy for those trying to escape.
The US is among several countries to have previously accused China of committing genocide in Xinjiang. The leading human rights groups Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have published reports accusing China of crimes against humanity.]
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. They absolutely have every right to and often are right to. That doesn’t mean they’re not hypocritical at times. But just because someone is hypocritical doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
Unless they are a campist trying to deflect critique with a but somebody else might be worse claim.
You need to actually assess the motivations and credibility of the accusor, not just blindly accept the things they claim. This isn’t just a hypocrite, this is a politician with an agenda.
China exerts extreme control over businesses that operate from there. That’s a simple fact. This individuals motivations aren’t extremely relevant.
Might their motivations be alarmist? Perhaps. Might they be protectionist? There’s a very good chance. Xenophobic and bigoted. Knowing human nature the odds are good. How does any of that change the fact that the Chinese government has tight controls over all businesses within their border? Again that is a simple fact. And makes this concern not unwarranted. Let’s phrase it this way. Would you be defending a US state-controlled organization from doing similar in China? I doubt it.