LANSING, Mich. — The Michigan Senate Appropriations Committee signed off on over $4,000,000 in incentives for two electric vehicle battery plants — a Ford Motor Co. plant in Marshall and an Our Next Energy plant in Van Buren. However, they did not consider the third request in the legislative transfer package to give funding to a more controversial battery plant near Big Rapids.
The potential plant in Green Charter Township has come under fire as the company trying to build it, Gotion Inc., has been targeted for potential links to the Chinese Communist Party.
While Gotion Inc.'s parent company, Gotion High-Tech Co., does say in its Articles of Association that a Committee of the Chinese Communist Party will exist in the company to abide by party rules, Gotion's Vice President of North American Operations Chuck Thelen has said Gotion Inc. is a subsidiary and that the communist party does not influence that company.
"I can tell you that never in my time with this company did I ever hear one of the people in a North America office discuss politics or party alliance," Thelen said during a panel discussion last week. "I heard absolutely nothing about being a right-wing Republican, a Republican, a Democrat, a radical socialist, communist, nothing."
"Has the communist party penetrated this company? No," Thelen said. "Do we have articles of incorporation that require a specific paragraph where you don't do business in the country of China? Yes."
In the lead up to the panel discussion about the plant, however, some remained unconvinced.
"The [Chinese Communist Party] and moving the [Chinese Communist Party] into this district, is against liberty and freedom and the American way," State Rep. Angela Rigas said.
"My constituents are not for this," Rigas said. "They're not for the communist government, the communist Chinese government in our state. There's no place in the United States of America for the [Chinese Communist Party]. That's what this is about."
Unless a special, unscheduled meeting is called, the earliest the Senate Appropriations Committee would consider the Gotion plant funds would be April 19.
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