乐生活The American Factory is full of details, but lacks some information about Fuyao’s interaction with the local government. People magazine wrote about Cao Dewang in 2015, and described his struggle with the local government vividly.
Cao Dewang asked his son to call dozens of workers. He stood at the factory gate with his umbrella and commanded, "Beat him, you beat him!" Damn it, you said that Dongzhang Reservoir is about to burst its dike. Why did you dig my tunnel in front of my door? Didn’t he just blackmail me for not paying you the money I negotiated?
The Internet Cafe inside the glass factory was checked by the city management. He called the Secretary of the county Party committee and said, "We’ll pay you hundreds of millions of dollars in tax a year… My employee’s shop, do not want your land, do not pay taxes, is opened by internal family members, you now come to a group of people and move our computer, you send people as soon as possible, and then move when I want to beat.
At the Dragon Boat Race held in Fuqing, the leader of the local Provincial Sports Committee proposed to let Cao Dewang win the title with 50,000 yuan of sponsorship. Later, the Provincial Sports Committee found a foreign businessman and informed Cao that he could not be named. At the award ceremony, Cao Dewang took the trophy from Miss Etiquette and threw it at the moment when the captain of the Australian team was ready to take the trophy. It entered Dongzhang Reservoir. Later, he wrote a review letter to the provincial government, saying that he had two mistakes: one was that he should not go on the day of awarding trophies; the other was that he mistakenly believed that as general manager of Fuyao, he should take safeguarding the interests of the company as his duty.
In summarizing why Cao Dewang dared to fight, People said that compared with contemporary entrepreneurs, Cao Dewang had no sense of original guilt and owned all the property rights of the glass factory in the 1980s. Years of struggle also enabled him to have a strong economic capital. Fuyao contributes 500 million tax revenue to Fujian Province every year, which is equivalent to the total income of a city’s agriculture and industry.
It’s not entirely without original sin. Although Cao Dewang had a hard time in his childhood, the Cao family itself was not a poor person. His grandfather was a well-known local rich man in Fuqing. His father was a shareholder in Shanghai Yongan Department Store. Cao Dewang did business early and had accumulated some money in the 1980s. Although his brother’s official went to Fujian Province’s deputy governor, he never used this relationship, but if he didn’t, he would still suffer a lot from fighting with the local government.
