EXCLUSIVE: How Small Town America Stopped A Chinese Communist Party Takeover

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 MichiganRep. 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.”

“Over the last two years the residents of Green Charter Township, a small town of just 3,200 people, came together to defend American interests and stop Gotion from bullying its way into their community,” Moolenaar said. “The opposition to the CCP-affiliated company attended board meetings to voice their concerns and rallied their neighbors in true grassroots efforts against Gotion.”

‘National Security Risks’

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.”

Later, in August 2023, the DCNF found Gotion High-Tech’s Chinese-language annual reports from the previous year revealing the firm employed 923 CCP members at that time. The same month, the DCNF also discovered footage on the firm’s Chinese-language website showing employees visiting CCP memorials dressed as Red Army soldiers to pledge their lives to the Party.

Other Chinese-language announcements on Gotion High-Tech’s website unearthed by the DCNF showed Gotion’s Chief Technology Officer, Steven Cai, at the internal CCP committee meetings of its Chinese parent company.

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.

“The full extent of Gotion’s ties to the CCP were uncovered, with the help of the investigative reporting by the 🏢Daily Caller News Foundation, as well as the national security risks posed by companies like Gotion,” Moolenaar said.

July 26, 2024 – Midwest Battery Roundtable with Rep. John Moolenaar, 2nd from left, and Ambassador Joseph Cella, 5th from left.

‘We Love Our Freedom’

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.

The former ambassador told the DCNF he blames local leaders for allowing such a company the opportunity to build a base of operations in Michigan.

“ 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.’”

Cella credits other local activists, lawmakers, and journalists for their work in opposing Gotion’s project.

“This was a first-in-the-nation moment where a subnational incursion via a ‘deal’ with a China-based and CCP-tied company led to the recall and defeat of elected officials,” Cella said, referencing the November 2023 Green Charter Township election. “The totality of those activities for nearly two years resulted in this ‘deal’ being in grave trouble and facing a dim future.”

Dr. Ormand Hook, co-strategist for the “No Gotion” movement in Big Rapids, Michigan, told the DCNF that “people who just wanted to live in freedom” are “responsible for our victory.”

“We were motivated by the fact that we love our freedom and are not willing to give up our freedom to America’s number one geopolitical adversary. Plain and simple,” Hook said. “We had to push back at every opportunity because we had no playbook. We found the weaknesses and exploited them as best we could. Our biggest objective was to replace the fraudulent elected officials, which we were successful in doing.”

Among other things, Hook told the DCNF that many in the No Gotion movement were galvanized into action after the Michigan state Senate Appropriations Committee granted Gotion $175 million in taxpayer funding to support their project. The funding allocation passed with a 10-9 vote, despite every committee Republican and three Democrats voting against it.

“We found out most local politicians were in bed with the governor and our enemies,” Hook said.

Lori Brock, another leader of the No Gotion movement, told the DCNF that she was “cautiously optimistic that this disastrous project may finally be coming to an end.”

“We will continue to fight until it is completely gone from our community, and it’s my hope that our political leaders have learned a valuable lesson from this experience: in America, you don’t get to completely upend a community and our way of life without the consent of the people who live here, and American tax dollars should never, ever be used to subsidize anything associated with the CCP,” Brock said.

Thelen and Gotion did not respond to requests for comment.

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