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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I’m not in that party. I am Dem. And it is not about nationalism. The Chinese dictatorship has killed tens of millions of Chinese. Why is a dictator okay for Chinese but not for Americans? To be thinking that sounds racist to me.
LMFAO. Nobody with half a brain cell left thinks it is okay for China to have a dictator who has killed millions of Chinese. It also sounds racist to be thinking it was okay that someone killed tens of millions of Chinese as if their lives aren’t important.
First of all, you can’t be racist against Chinese, because Chinese is a nationality, not a race. It’s like saying you’re racist against Americans, it makes no sense because just like the United States, the Chinese are a very racially diverse group of people with dozens of ethnicities. Second, the implication is without merit because nobody who is arguing in good faith is going to read what I wrote and come to that conclusion. If your argument is so bad you need to try to paint me as a racist to feel better, then perhaps you should just stop while you’re not too far behind.
Third, we’re not talking about China being a dictatorship, stop trying to change the conversation to something you feel you have a better chance of arguing against. We’re talking about whether or not the source that was posted was propaganda or not. And as far as sources go, the one that was posted was very right-wing biased.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/independent-journal-review/