Beijing is continuing the long march through America’s institutions without an ounce of protest from the federal government. On the contrary, the White House is virtually handing China the keys to the country.
A Chinese firm that employs hundreds of members of the Chinese Community Party (CCP) will be building up to two electric vehicle battery plants in Michigan thanks to approval from Joe Biden and the state’s Democratic politicians.
The company, Gotion Inc., will build its $2.3 billion battery plant near Big Rapids thanks to millions of dollars in state taxpayer subsidies and potentially billions of dollars’ worth of federal tax credits. And Gotion is already doing the legwork to make a second plant in the state.
Notably, Gotion’s facility will lie just 100 miles from Camp Grayling, the country’s largest National Guard training site.
Gotion’s new facility will become a reality due to approval from the Michigan Legislature earlier this year. Biden’s Treasury Department signed off on the plant in June, after which the company purchased almost 300 acres of land in Green Charter Township.
Yet, as the Daily Caller reports, Gotion employs 923 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members, including its CEO.
The outlet notes:
“Gotion High-Tech founded a CCP branch in 2010 that was upgraded to a CCP committee in 2014,” reads Gotion High-Tech’s 2022 ESG Report. “The CCP committee’s subunits are two CCP general branches and 11 party branches, currently with 923 CCP members, among which over 50% hold master’s degrees or higher.”
Gotion High-Tech’s CEO, Li Zhen, is also identified as the party secretary for the firm’s CCP committee within a section of the 2022 ESG report highlighting the company’s 2022 “party building work situation.”
According to Fox News, Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings reveal that Gotion, based in Fremont, California, was registered as a Chinese foreign principal.
And the Gotion plant isn’t likely to be the last major Chinese facility to be built in the Great Lakes State. Ford Motor Company and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (CATL), China’s top electric vehicle battery supplier, are proposing to jointly build a $3.5 billion electric vehicle battery plant in Marshall, Michigan.
CATL CEO Zeng Yuqun sits on the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, which is a high-ranking CCP advisory body that plays a major role in China’s “United Front.”
The U.S. government has said that China’s United Front is a strategy to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence overseas Chinese communities, foreign governments, and other actors to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies.”
While China continues to co-opt industry in the United States, it also bolsters its domestic industry and energy sector — even as America guts its own energy sector. As the Global Energy Monitor (GEM) and the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) revealed in a report on Tuesday, China is in the process of constructing over 300 more coal plants.
In just the first half of this year, China has issued permits for another 52 gigawatts of coal and doubled its commission of coal plants.
The CREA report found that China is building coal power plants in areas that do not need more generator capacity, meaning the country will have an excess of electrical generation capability:
The majority of projects are in provinces that have no shortage of generating capacity to meet demand peaks; and most new project locations already have more than enough coal power to “support” existing and planned wind and solar capacity. This shows that there is no effective enforcement of the policies limiting new project permitting.
… China now has 243 GW of coal power under construction and permitted. When projects currently announced or in the preparation stage but not yet permitted are included, this number rises to 392 GW. This means that coal power capacity could increase by 23% to 33% from 2022 levels, implying either a massive increase in coal power generation and emissions or a massive drop in plant utilization, implying financial losses and potentially asset stranding.
As The New American previously reported, China has built close relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan to gain access to the Middle Eastern country’s mineral-rich mines.
For instance, gold mines in Takhar province will be worked by the China-Afghanistan Company and have attracted a $310 million investment. Moreover, the Taliban has signed deals with Beijing allowing China to build factories in Afghanistan, extract Afghan oil, and even put surveillance systems in place to facilitate the Taliban’s efforts to control the populace.
In addition, China’s BRICS bloc of nations is poised to control almost half of the world’s total oil reserves, at a proportion of 719.5 billion barrels out of 1.6 trillion. That would rise to 65.4 percent if Venezuela, which has sought membership, joins the bloc.
In the global contest for energy resources and production, China is now positioned to pull well ahead of the United States.
