Cao Dewang Tells HKU Audience That Respect, Not Scale, Is the Real Test for Chinese Manufacturers Abroad

Cao Dewang has spent the years since American Factory turned his Ohio plant into a global case study staying largely out of the spotlight. On Monday he stepped back into it, at the University of Hong Kong, with a message that lands differently in 2024 than it would have when the documentary won its Oscar: Chinese manufacturers going abroad will be judged less on how fast they build than on how well they listen.

The founder of Fuyao Glass, one of the world's largest auto-glass suppliers, told the HKU audience that respecting local laws, regulations and culture has been central to his company's success in the United States. He drew on decades of building a global manufacturing business through shifting US-China relations. The source material does not disclose any new investment figures, deal values or net worth, and Cao did not announce any new transaction.

For readers who missed the film, the context matters. American Factory, directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, followed Fuyao's takeover of a shuttered General Motors plant in Moraine, Ohio, and the collision of Chinese management with American workers. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2020, turning a midwestern factory floor into a proxy for the broader debate about Chinese investment in the US. Cao became, somewhat unwillingly, the most recognisable Chinese industrialist in America.

Fuyao itself is a Fujian-born company that grew from a township enterprise into a supplier to global automakers. Its US expansion was never just about labour costs; it was about being inside the customer's market, close to car plants that demand just-in-time delivery. That logic still holds, even as tariffs, export controls and political scrutiny have made the calculus harder. Cao's counsel — obey the rules, adapt to the culture — is the unglamorous operating manual that Chinese firms often learn only after expensive missteps.

His timing is pointed. Chinese capital is again looking outward, but the destinations have shifted. Southeast Asia, Mexico, Hungary and the Middle East now absorb much of the manufacturing investment that once flowed to the US. At the same time, Washington has tightened screening of Chinese land purchases, technology transfers and factory projects. For a generation of Chinese founders who built at home and are now testing foreign soil, Cao's experience is one of the few long-run data sets available.

The lesson he offered at HKU is not a slogan about globalisation. It is a warning that going global is a governance problem before it is a growth story. Firms that treat compliance and local culture as afterthoughts tend to discover, painfully, that factories cannot run on capital alone. Those that embed themselves — hiring locally, accepting local norms, staying out of political crossfire — buy themselves time and legitimacy.

Whether Beijing's manufacturing champions will heed that advice is an open question. The incentives to expand abroad remain strong, and the penalties for getting it wrong are rising. Cao, now in his late seventies, has the credibility of someone who did it before the rules hardened. His appearance in Hong Kong was a reminder that the most durable export China has produced is not glass, but a template for how to survive abroad when the welcome mat is thin.