Plans for a sprawling factory in rural Michigan making batteries for electric cars offer an economic lifeline, but for some residents there is a big problem: the parent company is in China
Some in Green Township, Michigan, believe Gotion’s plans for a mega factory making batteries for electric vehicles in the region presents a national security risk. Others dismiss those fears as overblown.Some in Green Township, Michigan, believe Gotion’s plans for a mega factory making batteries for electric vehicles in the region presents a national security risk. Others dismiss those fears as overblown.
Brock and her neighbours say they are in a fight to preserve Green Township’s rural character and stave off the “national security risk” of a Chinese company. They insist they are on the brink of derailing the project.Across the US, anti-China sentiment is threatening to disrupt the transition to EVs.
“We don’t want smokestacks here,” Brock says. MESA believes industry and government officials perceive rural communities as financially “weak” and filled with a “bunch of hicks only interested in raising horses”. Another resident, Ormand Hook, says: “They messed with the wrong rednecks.”Just south of Green Township lies Big Rapids. In her fudge and gift shop there, Carlleen Rose sees vacant storefronts and young people leaving because of a lack of good jobs.
Gotion’s US subsidiary did not respond to a request for comment for this story, but Chuck Thelen, Gotion’s vice-president of North American operations, has engaged with local communities by holding a series of virtual town hall meetings. Hein April last year: “Despite what any current politicians may say, there is no communist plot within Gotion to make Big Rapids a center to spread communism.”
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