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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Anti-CCP rhetoric from white rural conservatives is just patent racism washed with a political guise. Every business in China has "ties to the CCP." That's how it works over there
So much for autarky lmao
This is not anti-CCP rhetoric, the CCP's influence on private businesses is a simple fact that isn't even denied by the CCP.
For example, the party's infiltration of the private sector gained momentum already after then-president Jiang Zemin called in the early 2000s for the CCP to represent "the advanced productive force" and welcome China's emerging private entrepreneurs.
Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2014, the CCP's influence on private businesses have intensified (with the disappearance of entrepreneur Jack Ma after he criticized the CCP supposedly being the most prominent case).
You'll find ample evidence for the the systematic ways in which the Chinese party-state has been interfering in the private sector. So called "CCP branches" within private firms -meant as a potential lever of control, alongside regulatory tools - are a key of that effort. In recent years, the number of these "party units" has increased dramatically, and the CCP branches have strengthened their role in private companies' management.
This is absolutely nationalist rhetoric from a conservative paper. Not only that, but the title is absolute nonsense. The CCP didn’t almost take over a town, and anyone who thinks they did is an idiot.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, they would love to control American towns, but they do not, nor have they come close to. You should be ashamed for even posting this tripe.
It's not 'nationalist rhetoric' to be wary of dictatorships. Nobody would care if this was a corporation from the Republic of China. That is the country and people that Americans were huge friends with during and before WWII.
Funny thing to say, considering Trump literally just put tarrifs on the Republic of China.