The village board in a small, rural town 50 miles south of Chicago voted yesterday to rezone property meant for an EV battery company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
That company is Gotion, Inc. whose parent company is Gotion High-Tech.
The Kankakee Times reported that former Illinois State Rep. Jeanne Ives explained the deal on her podcast…
In October 2021, (Illinois Gov. Jay) Pritzker signed into law new tax credits for EV businesses which Crane Chicago Business said are massive incentives that may be the largest ever in the state’s history. Earlier this year, Pritzker asked for even more incentives to get businesses here, including a deal closing fund that he could use to sweeten the pot.
That honey pot of tax incentives was finally enough to attract a two billion dollar investment in an EV battery plant in Manteno. Too bad the owners are Chinese Communists.
Gotion High-Tech “employed 923 active members of the Chinese Communist Party as of 2022,” including the company’s CEO Li Zhen, and the CCP “also established a talent recruitment ‘work station’ at Gotion Inc.’s Fremont, California, headquarters in 2017,” said a report by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF).
Earlier this year, former U.S. Ambassadors Peter Hoekstra and Joseph Cella “called on the Treasury Department Friday to ‘review’ Gotion,” which they say is linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The company “hosted multiple company trips in 2021 to CCP revolutionary memorials” in China, reported Fox News, at which company workers “wore Red Army outfits and pledged to ‘fight for communism to the end of my life.’”
“I volunteer to join the CCP, uphold the Party’s platform, observe the provisions of the Party’s by-laws, carry out a member’s duties, carry out the Party’s decisions, strictly observe the Party’s discipline, be loyal to the Party, work hard, to fight for communism as long as I live, be ready at all times to sacrifice everything for the Party and people and never betray the Party,” the company employees chanted during one of the trips, reported the DCNF.
As Illinois moves forward with this project, local officials in Muscle Shoals, Ala. last month rejected a Gotion plant over national security concerns.