Lawmakers raise newfound concerns over Gotion battery plant tied to China

After news broke that federal prosecutors have charged five Chinese nationals for spying in 2023 on Michigan’s Camp Grayling training facility, lawmakers have renewed calls for the state to cease giving taxpayers funds to Chinese electric vehicle battery manufacturer Gotion High-Tech.

Camp Grayling, which has trained Taiwanese soldiers in the past – including on the date the five Chinese nationals were caught spying – is 88 miles from the proposed Gotion plant.

“With more and more evidence of Gotion’s relationship with the CCP coming to light, and this most recent counterintelligence probe with the five Chinese nationals, the time is now to pause the state’s subsidizing of the Gotion project,” Michigan Senate Republican Leader Aric Nesbitt, R-Porter Township, wrote in a public letter Thursday.

Nesbitt’s letter to Michigan Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks pointed out the ever-increasing number of national security concerns raised about Gotion, including former CIA director Leon Panetta’s testimony to Congress in January, where he revealed the CCP will often “establish a manufacturing unit, they’ll establish whatever they can, and then they will use that for their own intelligence purposes.”

Documents have also revealed that the CCP-subsidized company has ties with multiple Chinese organizations utilizing slave labor genocide of Uyghurs. Gotion’s own Articles of Association state it “shall set up a Party organization and carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China.”

Nesbitt has demanded that Michigan’s legislature immediately cease payments to the Gotion project, pursue clawback provisions to salvage the money already allocated, and request the Michigan Economic Development Corp. halt all financial arrangements with Gotion until investigations have concretely shown that the Gotion project poses no national security risks.

“The implications are clear: this is not just another corporate handout to a business entity; the taxpayers of this state, thanks to this Legislature, are potentially financing an arm of the CCP, whose interests are not aligned with ours, especially in sectors as sensitive as technology and national defense,” he said.

Other Michigan lawmakers have separately commented on the prosecution announcement.

“This deeply disturbing news demonstrates the lengths the Chinese Communist Party will go to create a surveillance pipeline here in the US. It also serves as another example of why the Gotion facility near Big Rapids should not be built,” Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland, said in an email Friday.

The U.S. House voted last month to prohibit the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from using electric vehicle batteries made by Gotion and other foreign companies.