Michigan’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed, in the name of the State of Michigan, a deal with Gotion Inc, a subsidiary of Gotion High Tech Co Ltd which is headquartered in the People’s Republic of China. Gotion Hi Tech is not only subject to PRC national security law that requires domestic companies to provide information the intelligence community “requests” in whatever nation that information might reside, it has open and direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party. From that, Gotion Inc, the party to that Whitmer deal, has those same ties and PRC-legal obligations.
The problem is this. The Gotion-Whitmer deal is for a Gotion battery factory to be built at least in part in the Michigan township of Green Charter. Green Charter has demurred from being used for that deal, and in response, Gotion has filed suit…against Green Charter. Chuck Thelen, Gotion’s Vice President Gotion Global, North America Manufacturing Center:
It’s unfortunate that Gotion has had to resort to litigation to get the township to comply with their obligations under the agreement[.]
This, despite that Gotion’s beef is with Michigan and the Governor’s Office as the signatories of the overall agreement, which presumed to commit the Township to it. Green Charter isn’t the jurisdiction with any contractual obligations here.
It’s true enough that a prior Township board of supervisors had negotiated an agreement with Gotion, but that was done against the will of the Township residents. They ran a recall that tossed every one of those board members and installed a board amenable to the requirements of its collective bosses, those residents. That move rendered the prior agreement nonexistent.
This is a clear, dispositive demonstration, then, of the People’s Republic of China’s cultural mindset and that of Gotion’s managers. Government is in charge and subjects must obey. 一切都在國家之內,沒有什麼是國家之外的,也沒有什麼是反對國家的. Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State (hat tip to Benito Mussolini, who originated the maxim).