Kankakee Times

On September 8, Governor JB Pritzker announced the state’s deal with Gotion, a Chinese company, for construction of an electric vehicle (EV) battery factory in Manteno, southwest of Chicago.

But Gotion’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the joint ventures it’s reported to have with the Chinese military make it a national security threat, and taxpayers will be funding the $2 billion project with subsidies around four times that amount.

• Why has Illinois ignored Gotion’s relationship with the CCP?
• What possible justification is there for subsidies of $8 billion – an unheard of $3 million per job?
• Why haven’t adequate disclosures been requested of Gotion?
• What else would be discovered about Gotion if we got adequate disclosures?
• What, if any, due diligence was done on Gotion?
• Doesn’t Illinois care that trade secrets and know how developed at the factory will flow directly to the Chinese military?

Those questions and more are obvious, yet they’ve not even been put to the Illinois officials responsible. In Michigan, a firestorm of controversy is widely reported over those questions for a very similar Gotion project there. But from Illinois media there’s not a peep.

Chinese flag. | Wirepoints

Illinois appears to have entirely disregarded warnings issued last year to state and local officials — about companies just like Gotion — issued by the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. Their report is titled “Protecting Government and Business Leaders at the State and Local Level from Peoples Republic of China (PRC) Influence Operations.”

It warns that “geopolitical reality has placed state and local officials in the United States and other nations on the front lines of national security…. The PRC may also view a U.S. state or localities’ economic or other challenges as a key opportunity to create a dependency, thereby gaining influence.”

The report goes on: “Know your partners and who you are doing business with…. “Understanding the scope and depth of the PRC government’s active role in guiding and often exploiting China’s subnational relationships overseas is the first step towards mitigating risks…. PRC subnational engagements may involve a variety of entities, ranging from PRC government institutions to companies to cultural groups. None of them are necessarily free of Beijing’s control.”

Maybe Illinois’ disregard for those warnings is why the South China Morning Post recently reported that Chinese businesses particularly like Illinois, along with California and New York. “And such an approach seemed to work well, as Mary Ma, the China representative for the Midwestern state of Illinois, quoted Governor J.B. Pritzker as saying his state strives to be ‘the friendliest state in America for Chinese businesses.’”

If Illinois and Michigan had honored those warnings, one key step would have been to demand a full disclosure statement from Gotion, known as a Form 800, to allow for a proper review of foreign companies. That’s what’s being demanded now in Michigan by some prominent opponents of Gotion’s plant there: Former U.S. Ambassadors Peter Hoekstra and Joseph Cella called on the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to compel Gotion to deliver those disclosures.

In Michigan, Gotion delivered only a short-form disclosure that says little. In Illinois, we’ve seen no report of even that being done. Delivery of a completed Form 800 would also allow CFIUS to properly review Gotion’s plans, and potentially to block them, which we described in our last column on Gotion.

That should be demanded for Gotion’s projects in both Michigan and Illinois — submission of Form 800, for all to see and for CFIUS to properly review, covering both Gotion’s US subsidiary and the Chinese parent company that wholly owns and controls it, Gotion High Tech.

At least some politicians in other states have been asking questions. Last week, two members of the House Select Committee on the CCP, Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), wrote to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen demanding answers about Gotion.

And just yesterday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Missouri) also wrote to Yellen on similar concerns about different Chinese companies receiving huge federal tax breaks for EV-related plants in the U.S.

Locally, Congressman Darin LaHood (R-Illinois) did start the process of asking questions about the Illinois plant in his statement to us in our last column. LaHood also sits on the House CCP committee. He told us,

“I have serious concerns about Governor Pritzker and the Biden Administration’s active support for CCP-backed companies looking to expand their foothold in our economy. While I support incentives and improvements to our business climate in Illinois, I don’t believe taxpayers should be on the hook for billions in subsidies funneling to companies beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. One of the reasons I opposed the so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ was the potential for foreign adversaries to exploit loopholes to gain generous incentives and dominate key technologies in the United States. Illinois taxpayers deserve to know why Governor Pritzker and the Biden Administration are allowing CCP-backed companies to leverage taxpayer-funded investments, potentially threatening our domestic supply chains and national security.” [Emphasis added.]

Aside from the Pritzker and Biden Administrations, LaHood’s point should be made to Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Illinois) because he is the ranking Democratic member of the House Select CCP Committee. Doesn’t he want answers? Ask him. We have. No response.

Perhaps we are past the point of merely needing answers and should simply demand that all Gotion projects in the U.S. should be killed – based on evidence we already have. That evidence includes the following:

• A Daily Caller exclusive report details Gotion’s joint venture with Chinese military subsidiaries.
• The Gallagher-Moolenaar letter mentioned above says,

Gotion High-Tech Co.[the Gotion parent company] is a PRC company that has direct ties to the CCP and state-owned financial institutions. Gotion has been an active participant in the PRC-based version of the “Thousands Talent Program,” a program the FBI itself says encourages theft of trade secrets and economic espionage. Gotion has established multiple “Communist Party Units” within its operations and has publicly sought PRC provincial government support for its desire to expand its operations overseas. Even when courting major Western investment, Gotion has been adamant about retaining PRC-based control, including requiring that Volkswagen give up part of its voting rights, despite Volkswagen acquiring over 25 percent of the company. [Footnotes omitted.]

• The parent company’s CEO, Zhen Li, who joined Pritzker on the stage at the Illinois project announcement, is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which is a central part of the CCP’s “united front” strategy.
• A former counterintelligence official says it’s “100%” likely CCP will use Gotion’s Michigan battery facility for spying.

“Pritzker’s vision of Illinois as an electric vehicle production hub is in danger of becoming a pipe dream,” as Crain’s wrote last year, because Illinois had then gone “0 for 18 in the competition for battery plants.”  It certainly looks like the Gotion plant was a desperate grasp for a supposed success, sacrificing national security and $8 billion of taxpayer money.

Citizens of Manteno know. They turned out to express their anger at a Monday village board meeting, the highlights of which we’ve compiled here.  Nobody spoke in favor of the project.