Kankakee Times

Radio host Jeanne Ives criticized Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) for providing ‘massive incentives’ for a new EV battery manufacturing whose “owners are Chinese Communists” to locate in Manteno, Ill.

"In October 2021, 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,” said Ives on the “The Real Story with Jeanne Ives” radio show. “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,” said Ives. "Too bad the owners are Chinese Communists."

That company, Chinese EV battery maker Gotion, Inc., “has picked Illinois as the site of a new $2 billion EV lithium battery plant,” reported Forbes. 

Former U.S. Ambassadors Peter Hoekstra and Joseph Cella last week “called on the Treasury Department Friday to ‘review’ Gotion,” which they say is linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 

Gotion’s parent company, 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). 

Gotion High-Tech “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.

Ives is a former three-term member of the Illinois House of Representatives and ran in the Republican Primary for Illinois Governor in 2018. She previously served on the Wheaton City Council, attended the U.S. Military Academy and served as an officer in the U.S. Army.