National security threats continue to emerge from an electric vehicle battery component plant in Mecosta County that’s expected to receive $715 million in taxpayer subsidies.
Just ahead of Thanksgiving, Gotion High-tech and Tsinghua University in Beijing announced a memorandum of understanding to “leverage their respective strengths to advance cross-disciplinary strategic cooperation and innovation,” the metals industry website SMM reports.
“Key areas of focus include next-generation power battery technologies, essential battery materials, safety performance, and manufacturing processes,” according to SMM. “The partnership also aims to transform research outcomes into practical applications.”
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Gotion High-tech is the parent company of Gotion, Inc., which inked a secret $715 million deal with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration in 2022 the governor said at the time “is the biggest ever economic development project in Northern Michigan.”
In federal filings, Gotion admitted it is “Wholly owned and controlled” by Gotion High-tech.
Plans for the manufacturing facility near Big Rapids has prompted widespread concerns from Republicans and local residents over a variety of issues, from Gotion’s close ties to the Chinese Communist Party, to the plant’s proximity to the Camp Grayling National Guard base and cyber security center at Ferris State University, to slave labor in the supply chain, to the potential impact on the Muskegon River watershed.
Federal lawmakers led by U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., have repeatedly called on Whitmer to rescind the deal, most recently in late October, pointing to allegations of Chinese students spying on Camp Grayling and voting illegally in the 2024 election.
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The new MOU between Gotion High-tech and Tsinghua University — Xi Jinping’s alma mater — will undoubtedly compound the national security concerns by drawing a direct line between Gotion, Inc. and China’s military and national security programs.
Considered “China’s MIT,” Tsinghua “engages in a range of military research and was awarded secret-level security credentials for classified research in 2007,” according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre. “In advancing military-civil fusion, Tsinghua also continues its ‘fine tradition’ of serving China’s national security and defense, actively creating new platforms and initiatives to support this strategy.
“Not only its dedicated defense laboratories but also a range of key laboratories and research institutions at the university have received funding from the military,” ASPI reports. “Since at least 2012, Tsinghua has also been jointly supervised by defense industry agency SASTIND as part of a program to deepen its defence research and links to the defence sector.”
ASPI’s Defense Universities Tracker places Tsinghua University in the “very high” risk category due to “its high level of defense research and alleged involvement in cyber attacks.”
The university has also raised alarms in Britain, where universities including Cambridge, Strathclyde, Bath, Sheffield, and East Anglia all have direct links with Tsinghua.
In 2022, leaders of Britain’s MI5 and the U.S.’s FBI warned business and academic leaders about the risks of doing business with Tsinghua, with MI5 director Ken McCallum citing “world-leading expertise, technology, research and commercial advantage” most at risk, The Times reports.
Last year, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the CCP and the United States heard testimony from former Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center Bill Evania, who told lawmakers he’s “100%” certain the CCP would leverage the Gotion plant in Michigan for espionage.
Obama Defense Secretary Leon Panetta offered similar testimony to Congress earlier this year.
“I don’t think there’s any question that they are going to take advantage of that situation and I think we have to be very vigilant about what the hell is going on,” Panetta said.
The situation prompted lawmakers to ban the Department of Defense from purchasing products from Gotion, due to parent company Gotion High-Tech’s partnerships with China’s People’s Liberation Army.
Congress is considering a similar ban for the Department of Homeland Security.
“The CCP is successfully infiltrating and influencing communities and critical sectors across this nation and the Biden-Harris Administration is asleep at the wheel,” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said in an October statement.
The committee released a report titled “CCP Political Warfare: Federal Agencies Urgently Need a Government-Wide Strategy” that shows most of the “solutions and policies” in 25 federal sectors reviewed through multiple hearings and dozens of briefings “either ignore, placate, or only weakly address the CCP’s efforts to influence and infiltrate the United States.”
Moolenaar cited similar issues in Michigan in his call on state officials to take action before it’s too late.
“Governor Whitmer must cancel the state’s $715 million giveaway of taxpayer money to CCP-affiliated Gotion and end its plans to build near Camp Grayling,” he said. “Until these actions happen, our state’s security, elections, universities, and auto supply chins will remain vulnerable to CCP influence.”