By: Mark Glennon*
Remember some of the reaction last year to critics of the taxpayer-subsidized electric vehicle battery plant planned for Manteno, Illinois by Gotion, the Chinese company extensively tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)?
Gov. JB Pritzker said “MAGA Republicans have made themselves so irrelevant that they have to rely on xenophobia to gin up controversy for their base.” And he refused to answer questions put to him by legislators, writing, “I don’t have time to engage in your games….” A Chicago Tribune news article parroted Pritzker, calling Gotion critics “far-right.” Columnists Rich Miller and Greg Hinz also ridiculed critics as right wing, nutjob conspiracy theorists.
Well, here’s what Democrat Leon Panetta recently said in sworn testimony before Congress when asked if Gotion will be used for industrial espionage. Panetta, mind you, served in the Obama Administration as Secretary of Defense and CIA director:
I don’t think there’s any question that they are going to take advantage of that situation and I think we have to be very vigilant about what the hell is going on. That’s just the way they operate. They will establish a manufacturing unit. They’ll establish whatever they can, and then they will use that for their own intelligence purposes. [Emphasis added.]
Many other intelligence officials on both sides of the aisle have said the same.
We are taking Panetta’s advice, so read on.
The first broken promise likely will be that production at the Manteno plant will be this year, which Pritzker claimed when announcing the project and its $536 million subsidy by Illinois taxpayers. There’s no construction activity at the site, so it’s hard to see it in operation this year.
Moreover, it’s widely understood that operation of the Manteno plant is dependent on operations starting at a similarly sized Gotion plant planned for Michigan’s Green Charter Township, which, like the Manteno project, is intensely opposed by local residents. Parts to be produced in Michigan are believed to be necessary for production in Manteno.
That Michigan project prompted a stunning recall election in November of all township board members who had supported the project. Replacement board members are doing all they can to kill the project, but Gotion has responded with heavy-handed tactics.
Those rough tactics included Gotion cutting down trees last month where it intends to build the project. That was despite extensive dispute and litigation over whether the project can proceed.
And, last week, Gotion filed a breach of contract action in federal court, claiming the Michigan township is violating contractual promises made by the previous board.
“China is suing small town America!” is how that lawsuit was criticized on a Facebook page for Gotion opposition.
That’s a pretty fair way to frame it because Gotion’s extensive ties to the CCP are well-documented. Its articles of association demand fealty to the party. Its parent company entered a joint venture in China that has engaged in contracts with a U.S.-sanctioned “paramilitary organization.” It also entered a joint venture with a “Communist Chinese Military company subsidiary.” Video footage shows company field trips with employees dressed as Red Army soldiers pledging to “fight for communism to the end of my life.”
And if any contract obligations are breached, I hope the Michigan township answers that there was fraud in the inducement to enter the contract. That started with Gotion spokesman Chuck Thelen saying Gotion is not Chinese-owned.
In Illinois, the lawsuit against Gotion continues, alleging that local zoning and approval rules weren’t properly followed. No rulings yet.
When has any company persisted with plans for an industrial project in the face of local opposition as intense as we are seeing in Illinois and Michigan? Polling in both Illinois and Michigan show statewide voter opposition to Gotion’s plans, and even more locally.
Finally, we have questions for U.S. Rep. Raj Krishnamoorthi and others in the Illinois Congressional delegation who voted last week to force TikTok’s Chinese owner to divest: Is Gotion really that different from TikTok? Krishnamoorthi and his fellow Democrats haven’t said a peep about Gotion. Yet much of thinking behind the TikTok bill is that Chinese companies invariably answer to the CCP, representing a national security risk. Why the silence on Gotion? Is it because Gotion is Pritzker’s pet project? Nobody in the press has asked Krishnamoorthi about Gotion, though he’s the Democratic Ranking Member on the House Select Committee on strategic competition between the United States and the CCP.
Gotion seemingly is used to CCP-style top-down rule, regardless of what people want, and so far that’s what it’s getting from state government in Illinois and Michigan.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
“There’s no construction activity at the site, so it’s hard to see it in operation this year.”
My prediction is that this factory will never be built. China has serious economic problems at home and the EV market is collapsing.
Pritzker is a sucker. He is just trying to impress the progressives that he is doing this to save the planet when he is giving away our hard-earned tax dollars to the tune of $536 million, of which a lot is going to the CCP. This is pathetic. And, I agree with Leon Panetta, they will be spying on us!
Gotion is a bad company, they will create jobs and help eliminate global warming.
We all buy Chinese goods, if you do not want to buy them never shop at Walmart.
Illinois is booming so it does not need more good jobs, but more welfare.
Soon the only jobs that will be left are government jobs. Private industry is fleeing as is everyone else.
Could you at least try to be coherent?
It’s kind of cute seeing Americans suddenly disturbed by China. Starting in the mid 80’s markets in America began attracting investment into “financialization”, that is financial services at the expense of real wealth investments like industrial capacity and manufacturing tool making and design. Financial services make nothing, they print and sell money and debt in collusion with a federal government and dollar hegemony. Since the mid 80’s America has handed over all the real wealth to China voluntarily. Everything at WalMart, Target, Home Depot comes from Chinese design, know how and mfg. We thought we could have an economy based… Read more »
China didn’t steal our design our ingenuity? I was rug designer for an American rug company some years ago. I visited the rug mill in China to oversee the proper construction and those jackasses had completed a knockoff and were running production before they even showed us the “official” sample.
Mmmm and why were you going to China again? To oversee a process and design that your company handed them in the first place, my point. The first jackass-move was your company handing them the know-how at all. The Chinese textile company is your competitor, but your companies owners seemed to think they were just cheap employees they could exploit. Rugs are an easy low tech thing, China has us beat where it counts. If an American company wanted to reverse engineer a typical Chinese TV set, we wouldn’t have the skill to do it, let alone begin making TV’s… Read more »
You deflect from my point: they stole my design because they didn’t have the talent to design it themselves. Rugs are an easy low tech thing? You have no clue what you are talking about. Please educate about the industrial carpet and rug industry before you so arrogantly condescend.
The reversal on China actually is not sudden or recent. It started around eight years ago. There had been a bipartisan open-door policy with China, believing it would reform and liberalize if brought into the world community. That culminated in in 2000 with permanent normal trade relations with China. But both parties concluded that was a failure some years ago. It was a failure for the reasons you describe. We were chumps. Resistance to the Gotion plant is actually not out of the ordinary under the new, stricter policy toward China under both the Trump and Biden Administrations. It’s the… Read more »
Governor Snake Oil Salesman doesn’t like it when people call him out. Thankfully Wirepoints is around to do the heavy lifting that the so called journalists in this state either refuse to do or are afraid to do.
Chinese are communists and so are democrats therefore they have a lot in common. As usual, democrats destroying America one step at a time.
Volkswagen majority owner of Gotion? https://www.electrive.com/2021/12/15/vw-is-now-majority-owner-of-gotion-high-tech/
But Volkswagen vehicles held at port due to charges Volkwagen using Chinese slave labor in violation of Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act of 2021 ?
https://jalopnik.com/belarus-isnt-the-reason-vw-cant-sell-certain-cars-here-1851258196
Construction cranes contained Chinese spy cams.
https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-found-chinese-built-cranes-us-potential-security-risk-2024-3
No, no, no, Volkswagen is not the majority owner of gotion. It owns just twenty-some percent and it waived its voting rights on those shares to assure that the Chinese remain in voting control, as we documented earlier.. That stupid headline on the article you linked to is wrong, apparently from a translation. VW may be the largest shareholder but not majority, and it does not have voting control.
Mea culpa. You may remove the post if you like.
But restated: a major shareholder (Volkswagen, see “Volkswagen WWII”) is accused of using slave labor in China.
Volkwagen may become a synergistic major buyer of the end product for use in their vehicles.
Ford in marshall Michigan has ties to the CCP also. They are forcing the marshall residents to let them build a 4,000+ acre mega mess on one of Michigans largest aquafir’s. Marshall is being rerouted for ford. We already have the CCP in marshall. We have been fighting this with no help, no attention. Help the marshall residents start getting attention to what ford and the CCP are doing to us.
Illinois still has some patriotic residents willing to fight back and may eventually win this minor battle. It’s just too bad the war to save Illinois itself has already been lost.
Its time to bring the lies that Pritzker tells
Into the light of day. Wherever he is trying
To campaign for the presidency let that
Corner of the US know what he is really like and they are next to hear his lies.
Isolate him like you would the Covid virus.
He and his wife will make you rip out the toilets in your homes to get a property tax
Break. All of us carnival barkers unite and
Open the curtain on his side show for all to see.
Everybody should pray JP doesn’t even make the ballot for pres. He is a DISASTER!!!!