Face-to-face Interview with Cao Dewang： The speed of China makes Americans ＂look dumbfounded＂

As a representative of Fujian businessmen, Cao Dewang started from scratch with the enterprising spirit of "Dare to be the first in the world, and only if you work hard will you win", which completely ended the history that China automobile glass market was 100% dependent on imports. Fuyao Group, founded by him, has also grown into the largest supplier of automobile glass in China and the largest in the world, which has changed the pattern of the world automobile glass industry. As early as 2010, Fuyao Group signed a strategic cooperation agreement with General Motors of the United States, and Cao Dewang promised to build a factory in the United States within six years to ensure the supply in the United States.

Cao Dewang:In 2011, at the invitation of Russia, I set up a factory in Russia, and the information of Americans was very smooth. When the ribbon was cut, the investment manager from Ohio came to congratulate me on my opening, and said when would the United States start construction?

Reporter:Do they want you to go or whoever goes, as long as the capital goes?

Cao Dewang:No one can go, they want us to go, because we are a manufacturing industry.

Reporter:Do you want to go to America yourself?

Cao Dewang:If there is no "universal""I won’t go to America at that time, because I can’t speak English, and it’s hard to go there. But for us Fuyao, it is necessary to go to the United States. We make automobile glass, and the United States is the largest automobile manufacturing base in the world. If we want to be the world’s boss, we must come here.

?parentChoose one’s own place and bargain.?

?The speed of China makes Americans "look dumbfounded"

Dayton, Ohio was once an important industrial town in the United States, and several large American automobile manufacturers gathered in its glorious period. However, as the local manufacturing industry began to decline in the 1980s, local automobile factories closed down one after another.

In December 2008, General Motors closed the last factory in Dayton, which caused thousands of people to lose their jobs, and the city fell into depression and became a "rust zone". In 2014, after visiting several cities in the United States, Cao Dewang took a fancy to the old GM plant in Moraine District of Dayton.

Cao Dewang:Not clearing, "GM"The original factory producing pickup trucks has a total area of nearly 400,000 square meters, and the roof can also drive cars. Such a good factory was parked in that place, and no one bought it for five or six years. At that time, the property rights were in the hands of Jews, so I went to negotiate with them.

In the end, Cao Dewang bought a factory building covering an area of 180,000 square meters for 15 million US dollars, equivalent to nearly 100 million yuan. He is going to transform this factory that has been abandoned for many years into the first factory of Fuyao Glass in the United States.

In October 2016, Fuyao Glass USA Factory was officially completed and put into operation, becoming the world’s largest automobile glass monomer factory. Cao Dewang said that the speed of construction and installation of Chinese made Americans "dumbfounded".

?receiveDocumentary being filmed?

"I’m not stupid. China entrepreneurs are aboveboard."

Fuyao is not only the largest investment project in Moraine District, but also one of the largest investment projects in the United States during that period, which was well received by the local government. The municipal government even named a road next to the factory Fuyao Avenue.?

The once abandoned factory turned into a world-class factory, and this transformation process was recorded by local directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert.

Cao Dewang:I believe that documentary is unprecedented, and no boss dares to let him shoot it like that. Because he used to shoot a documentary about the bankruptcy of this factory, it was called "The Last Truck". When this car rolled off the assembly line, the workers mourned everywhere. When he filmed it with me, he remembered the name "The First Glass" and I said yes. When the director came to my office to talk about the contract with me, he was very happy to see my promise. He thought that this Chinese was stupid, and Americans were afraid to let you shoot it. What should I do after the filming because of random selection and broadcasting?

Reporter:What do you mean, picking and broadcasting indiscriminately?

Cao Dewang:He’ll hack you, show the bad shots, and delete all the good ones.

Reporter:You’re not afraid?

Cao Dewang:I come from China. As an entrepreneur, I am aboveboard. You can shoot everything I do when you see it, and you can broadcast it when you shoot it. Not only will I let you film my work in the United States, but I will also let you film my Fuyao Group’s factories in China and Russia if you need to.

The documentary was finally named "American Factory" and won the Best Documentary Feature Film Award at the 92nd Academy Awards, which made the world know Cao Dewang from China and his American factory.

?In the American way?

?Win the trade union dispute?

Cao Dewang said that to set up a factory in the United States, it is necessary to "fight wits and wits" with various forces, and the most intense disagreement arises in the establishment of trade unions. Some workers who are used to the high welfare and high freedom of the general factory in the past can’t accept the Chinese management model and factory culture and start planning to form trade unions. Since the second half of 2016, a team of dozens of people has often appeared inside and outside the factory, lobbying other workers to agree to set up a trade union in Fuyao Factory.

Cao Dewang:Is there any room for discussion about forming a trade union? I said no. If it comes in, I’ll go out. I’ll shut it down right away. The factory needs to be managed well, but the trade union is anarchy and there is no management. In the past, GM went bankrupt because of the trade union. I will not let history repeat itself.

UAW—, the Auto Workers’ Union, is an opponent of Fuyao Group. At that time, the labor cost of GM’s factory was nearly twice that of Toyota because of the intervention of this union, and it was finally declared bankrupt. In order to win this battle, Cao Dewang specially spent $1 million, and invited the labor relations committee, an anti-union organization in the United States, to carry out reverse propaganda on workers.

"Knowing soldiers from ancient times is not bellicose"

?Let the United States change its views on China and Chinese.?

Fuyao Group has been operating in the US factory for five years. It has experienced the acclimatization such as trade union conflict and employee efficiency, as well as the repeated environment such as trade tension and global economic slowdown. Now it still holds the top spot in the automotive glass industry, and its products account for about 25% of the global market.

Cao Dewang:We are all Chinese, and our motherland is our mother, which is eternal. Today, when Chinese comes here to run a business, the most important thing for us is not the question of how much money we earn, in order to make Americans change their views on Chinese and China.

As early as 1995, Cao Dewang tried to go abroad and invest overseas. In the eyes of some observers, after decades of introducing foreign factories in China, entrepreneurs represented by Cao Dewang went abroad and set up factories all over the world, opening a new history.

Reporter:Is your factory irreplaceable?

Cao Dewang:Is irreplaceable. I came to invest in the United States, all of which are proprietary technologies registered by myself. The equipment I am making is more effective than that made in the United States and Europe. Now I can proudly say that we have solved about 30% of the supply in the United States.

Reporter:Experts and scholars in any field are predicting the future of Sino-US relations.

Cao Dewang:It is impossible for Sino-US relations to be calm. First of all, we must control differences. If you look ahead and look back, then you should stay at home and not go out, and you will not be able to develop. If you want to go out, you should learn to trust others and gradually achieve mutual trust. In addition, there must be enough ability. "Knowing soldiers from ancient times is not bellicose". I am not a militant, but I must know soldiers so that I won’t die in the hands of pretty strong people when I want to fight.

Producer Zhang Shifeng Ma Lijun

Reporter Dong Qian?

Planning, Yang Luyao and Zhao Ziyan

Director Ding Fang

Editor Zhang Hongfei

Camera? Li Nanxing Guo Zhide

(Editor Wang Danni)