KOPPEL: Here's the good news.
The Chinese are putting 25,000 new cars a day on the road.
Here's the bad news.
That's 9 million more vehicles a year.
[ Horns honking ]
And sometimes it seems as though they're all in Chongqing,
the megacity in western China
fast on the road to becoming the Detroit of China.
[ Horn honking ]
lt wasn't all that long ago that China traveled on two wheels.
Getting to and from work was a quiet, if aerobic, affair
marked only by the soft, whirring sound of bicycle tires.
[ Horn honking ]
Those days are over, and there's no going back.
Everything that's good and bad about the automobile
is now irrevocably also a part of China --
the mobility, the accidents.
The independence, the pollution.
The noise, the noise.
ln a Chinese city these days, the most dangerous place to be
is on or near a major road or highway,
just like America.
At least the way America was perhaps 50 years ago,
when its great love affair with the automobile
was in full bloom.
Since so many Chinese drivers have never driven before,
there are a great many accidents.
Accidents that call for new methods
of conflict resolution,
which can even include options
like leaving the scene of an accident.
China's new passion for the open road
has led to an epidemic of motor-vehicle accidents
and a vast, new vista of opportunities.
TANG: China is a place with a huge potential.
KOPPEL: Jackson Tang runs Liberty Mutual in China.
Yes, that Liberty Mutual -- the American insurance company.
Like a lot of other industries,
to invest in China is a long-term investment.
lf you want to get a good return in three, five years,
l think you've gone to the wrong country.
KOPPEL: But Jackson Tang is a patient man
with a creative long-term view.
This van is sort of a mobile office.
lts driver is also an insurance adjustor.
Liberty Mutual's client is the driver of the van.
lt's just a fender bender,
but the objective here is to reach a settlement on the spot.
[ Speaking Chinese ]
KOPPEL: This fellow's company insures the Mercedes driver.
The traffic policeman arrives on the scene.
"Who is the driver?
Show me your license," he demands.
"What happened?" he asks the other driver.
China is still in the early stages
of developing an automobile-centered culture,
but this thing isn't going to court, and there are no lawyers.
And while each insurance-company adjustor
is trying to make his client's case,
it is the cop who serves as the ultimate arbiter.
He's judge and jury, and he can allocate blame.
This guy is 40% at fault.
The other guy, 60%.
ln this case, the traffic cop actually rules
that one driver is entirely to blame.
"You're not allowed to cross the line when turning,"
he tells the Mercedes driver, and that's it.
The policeman gives out copies of his official report,
and the van driver goes off with the Liberty Mutual adjustor
to collect his money.
Perhaps because cars
are a relatively new phenomenon in China,
people handle at least minor accidents
with a minimum of fuss.
No litigation, no cops, no insurance company.
A simple cash payment on the street,
complete with change.
Something similar involving one of our drivers happened
as we were on our way to an interview one morning.
[ Horn honking ]
Miss Tang here is a former city bus driver.
She has a temper about as hot and fiery
as the local chili peppers.
What happened about 1 0 minutes ago
is that, in traffic, she was hit by another car.
She stopped in the middle of traffic, tying up everything,
got out, started yelling at the other driver.
Now, this is what happened.
He nudged her bumper.
lf you can't see any evidence of damage,
that's because there really doesn't appear to be any.
But Miss Tang wasn't giving an inch,
and a couple of local folks seemed to be taking her side.
And the end result
was that after five minutes of being stuck in traffic,
the other driver gave up, gave her 1 00 yuan,
and he went his way and she went her way.
Case settled. Out of court.
Well done.
We happened upon this accident on a country road.
Nobody died, no one seems to have been hurt,
and none of the passengers is talking about neck injuries
or consulting his lawyer.
China is still a country
in which avoiding unnecessary complications
is the primary rule of the road.
The owner of the van pays 200 yuan -- about $27 --
for his own crane.
ln Chongqing alone, an average of 400 traffic accidents a day.
China's roads are already the deadliest in the world.
The U.S. has far more cars and drivers,
but China has more than twice as many highway fatalities.
And watch it.
Two minutes later, the van is back on the road...
[ Engine sputtering ]
...if not exactly roadworthy.
As you can see, Liberty Mutual and Jackson Tang
have their work cut out for them.
Liberty Mutual was allowed to set up shop in China
on the condition that it do so in Chongqing,
one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.
lt's a mixed blessing.
There's no deductible in China, where the client might pay,
say, the first $1 00 or $500 in damages.
So Chinese customers -- most of them new drivers --
hit the insurance company up for every scratch, nick, or dent,
knowing full well that on these really small claims,
Liberty Mutual almost always pays off
without any investigation.
[ Speaking Chinese ]
KOPPEL: lt's a matter of building public confidence,
laying the groundwork for a huge market.
What we're looking at out there, that's your future.
That's either going to be your fortune or your disaster.
What do you think?
l would fully agree this is our future.
This is our fortune.
Because in China -- take Chongqing as an example --
the economy is growing.
The number of vehicles is increasing rapidly.
-How rapidly? -Oh, very rapidly.
There could be 34% growth
in the new-vehicle market every year.
[ Speaking Chinese ]
KOPPEL: Most Chinese have never owned a car.
Many are the first in their family
to even learn how to drive.
While most of us learned to drive in our teens,
these are people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.
lt's different. lt's more difficult.
They are taken slowly -- very slowly --
through their paces on the course,
driving around and sometimes into obstacles.
The freedom to travel
where you want to go, when you want to go --
that's about as radical a change as China has ever known,
and this is a country that's lived through a few revolutions.
[ Engine revs ]
[ Dog barking ]
KOPPEL: You can see at a glance
that the village of Dragon Spring
is a long way from the city of Chongqing,
but it's all part of the same gigantic municipality.
30 million people in all --
2/3 of them peasants like Ching Gong Lu and her family --
and the plan is to absorb about 1 0 million of those 20 million
into the city.
lt's hard to imagine in this humble setting,
but someday -- perhaps 1 0 or 20 years from now --
the city will have expanded so far
that this will be one of Chongqing's satellite towns,
or suburbs.
Tenuous links already exist
between Chongqing and Dragon Spring.
Now that there's a decent road, take a look at this.
Ornamental tree farms in the valley.
Apparently, those rich homeowners in the city
can't grow their own trees,
and they're willing to pay for these.
How about that?
And these oranges?
There's an American exporter buying up all they can grow.
Change is everywhere.
lt pulls up in front of Ching Gong Lu's house
every morning.
A modern bus that picks her and her neighbors up
and takes them and their harvest into town, to the market,
on a well-paved road.
And those roads are springing up everywhere.
This woman is part of a two-person team.
You can't see her husband.
He spends much of his life down at the bottom of deep holes,
filling buckets with dirt
while she winches the buckets to the surface.
Both of them -- either of them --
would be hard-pressed to explain their part
in building a national highway system,
but that is what they are doing --
digging footings for a highway.
There must be machines that could do this job,
but conserving manpower is not China's problem.
Putting hundreds of millions of dirt-poor people to work is.
Any job that can be done by manual labor is.
This lifestyle, hard as it may be,
is actually an improvement for them
and a small but vital part of building China's future.
Building a massive new highway system
is one of the government's highest priorities.
The countryside has fallen so far behind China's cities.
lndeed, there are so many thousands of peasant protests
and demonstrations every year that improving the rural economy
is considered a national-security issue.
The Chinese government has almost certainly studied
President Eisenhower's decision more than 50 years ago
to develop an interstate highway system.
That, too, grew out of national-security concerns.
Eisenhower wanted to ensure the speedy evacuation
of America's cities in the event of a nuclear attack.
But those highways and the explosion of cars
that flooded onto them changed the face of America.
They prompted the movement of jobs and people
into the underpopulated South and West.
They led to the creation of sprawling suburbs
around every major city in the country.
Mobility led to the development of shopping centers,
industrial parks, drive-through restaurant chains.
But most of all, the availability of cars, roads,
and cheap gasoline led to the greatest redistribution
of city and country people America has ever known,
which is exactly what China hopes to achieve.
The Chinese government is betting its economy
and its future on the success of the automobile industry.
These men are laying wire for dynamite,
preparing to blast their way into the base
of yet another mountain, carving yet another tunnel
through the range of mountains
that has kept the further reaches of Chongqing
isolated from its urban center.
[ Dynamite exploding ]
Tunnel digging employs thousands of workers,
people like the Chuns,
who have come from Sichuan Province
five hours away.
They work 1 1 -hour shifts in the tunnel.
Yu Han is 51 years old.
He is a professional tunnel worker
who just finished a job in Beijing.
He brought his entire family with him.
[ Drill buzzing ]
His son, Xi, who is 25, drills footings for the tunnel.
Father and son work seven days a week if they can.
They earned $8 a day working construction in Sichuan.
Here they can make $1 4 a day.
Besides, says Mr. Chun,
construction stops when it rains.
Working in a tunnel, you can make money every day.
Xi's young wife
is trying to get a job on an electronics assembly line.
The sun at the center of their little galaxy,
the joy of all their lives,
is the 2-year-old grandson, Guo Jia.
Would you like him to be doing the same work someday?
lNTERPRETER: lt's entirely up to fate.
lf he studies hard, maybe not,
but otherwise, he'll have to do what l do.
KOPPEL: Mr. Chun's wife has her own responsibility --
caring for young Guo Jia.
She and Mr. Chun have been married 25 years,
and she follows him wherever the work is.
Five people will live in one room
of this ramshackle dormitory for 1 0 months.
We asked how five people could possibly live that way,
and Mr. Chun said, "What do you expect?
This is a construction site."
He and his family endure the noise, the dirt,
the lack of privacy, he said,
because they see it as a way to ultimately improve their lives.
They're building roads as fast as people can buy new cars.
lNTERPRETER: lt won't be long before China overtakes the U.S.
and becomes number one in the world in highways.
KOPPEL: Number one in highways,
number one in cars.
[ Horn honking ]
And this man will be right at the heart of it all.
[ Horn honks ]
You can beat a metaphor to death,
but this one isn't bad.
What you're looking at here is China in microcosm.
On one level, a perfectly groomed traffic cop
going through elegantly rehearsed motions.
Go here, stop there. These are the rules.
[ Horns honking ]
While a generation of newly minted drivers
revels in a communal explosion of anarchy.
All of it monitored, though hardly controlled,
from Chongqing Traffic Center,
where feeds from more than 700 cameras
follow the action all over town.
That's China, an authoritarian government
just barely in control of what's happening.
[ Telephone beeps ]
Meet Yin Ming Shan.
All you need to know about Yin Ming Shan for the moment
is that he plans to be to Chongqing
what Henry Ford was to Detroit.
[ Speaking Chinese ]
lNTERPRETER: Foreigners grew up with cars,
so there's nothing special about owning a car.
To have a car is a normal thing,
but in China, only top government officials,
foreigners, and rich people could buy or even ride in a car.
So when regular Chinese people earn enough money,
they have a very strong desire to buy a car.
That's why l believe China, in the very near future,
will become the world's biggest consumer of cars.
[ Horns honking ]
KOPPEL: China has gone from having virtually no private cars
a few decades ago
to more than 30 million by the end of last year.
lndeed, if current trends continue,
China will have more cars than the United States by 2030.
More cars, more roads and highways,
thousands of miles of roads and highways
already under construction.
China's first modern highway opened 20 years ago.
Now they have 33,000 miles of new expressways.
You can't change a country's infrastructure like that
without changing the entire country.
[ Horns honking ]
lt's almost like the Wild West out here.
Some people follow the traffic rules and others don't.
TANG: A lot of these people own their car in the first time,
and they just got their license.
They are very eager to drive.
But l would say the driving habit
is not as good in Chongqing.
For example, taxi drivers -- lt's crazy.
KOPPEL: Taxi driver Tun Ring Shu might bristle at the analysis,
but she'd be the first to acknowledge
that Chongqing does have major traffic problems.
[ Speaking Chinese ]
lNTERPRETER: We can't drive fast in downtown
because there are too many people.
lt's a big headache.
People don't obey the traffic lights,
and they just cross the road anywhere.
[ Horn honking ]
KOPPEL: lt's hard to know
whether Miss Tun considers herself
and her warrior-like driving style
to be among Chongqing's traffic problems,
but she is clearly unrelated to any solution.
[ Speaking Chinese ]
KOPPEL: This is a Ford showroom in Chongqing,
where the customer is treated like a visiting dignitary.
Understand that 80% of those Chinese
considering the purchase of a car are first-time buyers.
The Chinese customer is not just about himself.
KOPPEL: Vivian Palmer is a Ford marketing manager.
lt is very much influenced by his family
because this is a very significant purchase,
especially if it's a first-time buyer.
lt's not about just him or her being in the vehicle,
so the whole family needs to be convinced
that this is the right vehicle.
KOPPEL: This is the Hu family --
two brothers, their wives, and one sister.
They're going to split the cost and share the car.
9 out of 1 0 buyers in China pay cash.
Chinese cars are much cheaper,
but nearly 3 out of every 4 cars sold in China
carries the brand of one of the giant global auto companies
like Toyota, Volkswagen, and Ford.
[ Speaking Chinese ]
lNTERPRETER: We know the Ford line,
but we want to check it out for ourselves.
This car is very good.
However, the price is higher than the Chinese cars.
But they're all made in China -- the American cars, too.
KOPPEL: The cars are nearly all made in China,
and they are better than the Chinese brands.
The prospects of all those Chinese customers
has every foreign automobile company drooling.
But there's some major-league local competition
girding itself to compete here at home in China
and, eventually, in the United States.
[ Speaking Chinese ]
lNTERPRETER: We have to make use of every second,
every minute, every hour.
Our company wastes a lot.
Workers are just standing there, waiting for the line.
Why are they getting paid to do nothing?
l'm not sure you guys understand me.
Every time l tell you, you just simply don't get it.
KOPPEL: Yin Ming Shan owns Lifan Motors
and has been building cars for three years.
Before that, he was known as the motorcycle king of Chongqing.
When you were younger,
when you were starting your motorcycle business,
you took some technology from Honda.
You reverse-engineered it,
and then you started making your own motorcycles.
The reason that the United States is worried
about selling high-tech products here
is they fear that Chinese scientists
will reverse-engineer it and steal it.
lNTERPRETER: Technology develops very fast.
lf America doesn't sell technology to us,
the Germans or the Japanese will.
Secondly, our engineers are working quickly
to develop our own technology.
So, in the end, you will lose your opportunity completely.
KOPPEL: That's Yin Ming Shan.
"Okay, so l stole some technology from the Japanese.
And if you won't sell me yours, l'll buy it somewhere else."
He's not shy.
lNTERPRETER: Compared to the rich Americans,
the Chinese are still very poor.
What right do the Americans have
to stop the Chinese from getting rich?
According to the American Constitution,
all men are created equal.
KOPPEL: When he's not misappropriating
the U.S. Declaration of lndependence,
Yin Ming Shan composes his own slogans
for the Lifan Motor Company.
One of my own favorites loosely translates as
"lf you screw with Lifan, Lifan will screw with you."
He already sells cars throughout the developing world,
and now AlG, the largest insurance company in America,
has agreed to make a major investment in his company.
[ Announcer speaking Chinese ]
Study him closely.
He's tough, he's competitive,
he doesn't mind bending the rules,
and he has his eye on the U.S. market.
l want to send a message to China and the world
that you can't dump dangerous products on American consumers.
KOPPEL: Philadelphia lawyer Jeffrey Killino's view
is understandably colored by the fact
that he represents the families
of three young construction workers
who were involved in a fatal car crash.
The cause of the crash was tire failure,
and that, says Killino,
was the fault of the Chinese manufacturer,
who cut costs by eliminating a critical safety feature --
a 30-cent gum strip.
lf you do not watch the Chinese manufacturer
every second of the way,
they will find a way to put profit in front of safety.
KOPPEL: A lot of Americans have a jaundiced view
of China and its impact on the United States.
Bob Cebina is head of the United Auto Workers Local
at a Monroe, Michigan, plant
that supplied Ford with drive shafts and catalytic converters.
'Cause we've been already told, "Can't meet that lowest bidder,
then we won't do business with you."
Right now, the Chinese are the lowest bidder, pretty much.
Wages are cheaper.
Health and safety like ours is nonexistent in China.
KOPPEL: There was a time
when America's economic trousers were supported
by what is now loosely referred to as the Rust Belt.
The automobile industry and its associated suppliers
sprawled across the Midwest,
providing middle-class jobs to blue-collar workers.
Now that's withering fast as production moves elsewhere
in search of cheaper labor.
Ford is shutting down the Monroe operation later this year,
affecting 1 ,200 jobs,
except that some of those jobs
are moving to a new plant just a half-hour away.
Same jobs, same equipment, same union.
Different employer and much lower pay.
l was making $28.63, l believe, at Ford.
l'm making $1 5.75 here.
KOPPEL: And the new boss is -- you guessed it -- Chinese.
We bought more than 1 0 different manufacturing companies
in the United States in the last 1 0 years.
KOPPEL: Pin Ni runs the American operation
for Wanxiang, China's largest auto-parts company.
Nl: This is the perfect, classic business model.
lt fit us in terms of what we're thinking very well,
which means American assembling,
American engineering, American customer service,
and a China component,
which means the low-cost component.
KOPPEL: With a buyout and a pension from Ford,
Mark Ravco says he came out ahead.
RAVCO: lt pretty much was a no-brainer for me.
l don't look at who owns the company,
who's financially backing the company.
l look at it as a job, a good job.
KOPPEL: Far from resisting Chinese investment
in the United States,
local government officials from Michigan
are now making regular trips to China
to attract even more such investment.
One morning in Chongqing,
we ran into this delegation from Wayne County,
which includes Detroit.
They were trying to drum up business
from Chinese auto-parts companies like Wanxiang.
Aboard their bus, going from one meeting to another,
Wayne County executive Robert Ficano
acknowledged that Michigan made a huge mistake a generation ago,
and he doesn't plan to repeat it.
What we want to do is not make the same mistake
they made with Toyota and they made with Japan.
They weren't really welcomed with open arms.
Where does Toyota have all their plants now?
They're not in Michigan,
and yet they're big investors in the United States.
KOPPEL: The Chinese automobile industry
is poised to become the biggest in the world.
That's not a hope or a dream.
That's a conscious, strategic decision
made by the Chinese government.
That plan has already made China
the world's largest producer and consumer of steel.
That plan is one of the main engines
of China's sizzling economic growth.
That plan will put tens of millions of new Chinese drivers
behind the wheel of tens of millions of new cars
speeding along thousands of miles of new roads and highways.
Well, good for China.
But what's good for China, it turns out,
may also be good for General Motors.
[ Announcer speaking Chinese ]
Liberty Mutual's CEO Jackson Tang will tell you
the automotive status symbol in China these days
is an American car -- a Buick, a black Buick.
TANG: The Buick are popular cars in Chongqing,
and they like black cars
because that represents elegance and status.
KOPPEL: Buick has a long history in China.
China's last emperor --
We're going back more than 80 years now --
he owned at least one Buick.
Even Communist leader Zhou Enlai owned this 1 941 Buick.
[ Horn honks ]
The fact is that General Motors got an early foothold
in the new China,
and its partners in the Chinese government
insisted on bringing back the Buick brand.
Now more Buicks are sold in China than in the United States.
GM dominates the market
with more than a million vehicles sold last year.
lNTERPRETER: Buick is an old brand,
and nowadays we have lots of new brands coming out.
But Buick still has a better reputation.
KOPPEL: And what's good for General Motors,
it turns out, is also good for Ford.
A lot of work is manual
because we're trying to take advantage
of the low labor rate here.
KOPPEL: Mei-Wei Cheng is the executive chairman of Ford
in China.
He says that China's cheap labor costs
are even cheaper here in Chongqing.
The gap between the coastal area and the western part of China
is fairly significant,
and that's part of the reason
why we're investing in Chongqing --
because we expect that the western province
will also grow at a very fast rate,
and then we'll be in the place where the market will be.
KOPPEL: Which is exactly how the Chinese government plan things,
and the Ford Motor Company
is an essential ingredient of that plan.
The government designated Chongqing
as one of its centers of auto production.
lt's on the Yangtze River,
which flows to Shanghai and the Pacific Ocean.
And it's a good deal for Ford,
whose sales are plummeting back in the United States,
while here in China, sales were up 30% last year.
lt's not gonna be a secret to you
that there are a lot of people back in the States --
in Detroit, in Dearborn --
who are watching this interview right now,
and the steam is coming out of their ears, right?
Because they see Ford in the United States
going down the toilet,
they see Ford in China doing brilliantly,
and they see their jobs coming over here.
Well, l think, obviously, we have some challenges today
with our business in the U.S. market,
and l think our leadership is doing everything
to make sure we correct that
because that's a very important part of our business --
the U.S. market --
because still the number-one market in the world.
KOPPEL: Although if Chinese projections hold,
that won't be the case for very much longer.
[ Speaking Chinese ]
KOPPEL: So, if you were going to try to bridge
the cultural divide
between Chinese car manufacturers
and the U.S. market,
which iconic figure would you put on your dashboard?
♫ Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me ♫
♫ Let's rock ♫
KOPPEL: Selling Geely cars made in China
at the Detroit Auto Show
may require actually bringing Elvis back from the dead.
But the Chinese carmakers are serious,
and some of them expect to be in the U.S. market by...
2009. We hope to come to this market.
KOPPEL: And here's what they think might appeal
to the U.S. consumer.
These hybrid cars produced by a cellphone battery company
which just got into the auto business
and these whimsical little electric vehicles.
Millions of new cars
have made China's cities among the most polluted in the world.
Chinese still favor larger cars as status symbols.
And in Beijing, for example,
it's been reported that 40% of cars
have no pollution controls at all.
But carmakers are betting
that eventually there will be a big market
for cleaner, fuel-efficient models.
This Buick Riviera concept car
is one of the first cars designed primarily in China.
lt can carry a new hybrid engine.
Chou Min headed the Chinese design team.
MlN: Chinese, the name is Buick Wei Lai.
"Wei lai" in China means "future,"
so l think this is just a perfect Chinese name
for this concept car.
KOPPEL: ln the meantime, though,
GM is also marketing the king of all gas guzzlers --
the Hummer.
[ Speaking Chinese ]
KOPPEL: "lt's so big," she says.
"Every time l see a Hummer, l get so excited.
lt's awesome. lt gives me a feeling of power."
Selling more than a few symbolic Hummers in China
actually makes little or no sense.
The Chinese government is subsidizing gasoline prices
to keep them artificially low --
less than the price that Americans pay --
but that's a short-term fix to a long-range problem.
The Chinese demand for oil
is growing eight times faster than in the West.
And, eventually, growing demand has to drive prices up,
leading to inflation
and a potentially dangerous situation
in which worldwide demand for oil exceeds supply.
The government is pushing hard on alternate solutions.
Chongqing is actually converting all of its taxis
and public buses to run on compressed natural gas.
And from this station attendant's point of view,
the experiment is working.
lNTERPRETER: Drivers prefer natural gas.
lt's cheaper, and there's much less pollution in the air.
KOPPEL: But talk to taxi driver Tun Ring Shu,
who has to work 1 0 hours to earn $1 4,
and you hear a different story.
[ Speaking Chinese ]
lNTERPRETER: Refilling natural gas is difficult.
We have to line up for hours.
This adds to our problems, so we can't earn a lot.
[ Horn honks ]
KOPPEL: Which is why she drives like a maniac.
lNTERPRETER: We drive fast.
lf we drive slow, we can't support our family.
KOPPEL: But no matter how fast she drives
or what fuel she uses,
China will have a hard time keeping up.
This year, for example,
China will put at least another 9 million vehicles
on the road -- 25,000 new cars a day,
a growing number of them foreign cars
with superior technology assembled in China.
And here's where the Chinese government
plays another important role.
GM, Ford, every foreign automaker
who builds cars in China,
is required to have a Chinese partner
who owns at least 50% of the operation.
They watch, they learn, and eventually they compete.
Kevin Wale is head of General Motors in China.
They're already a competitor.
They sell cars under their own brand.
And we've known that all along.
That's a process we knew would happen in the Chinese industry.
l now present to you the new Liebro CS7.
[ Applause ]
KOPPEL: Which brings us back to those Chinese offerings
at the Detroit Auto Show.
MAN: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Kylin.
[ Applause ]
KOPPEL: Chinese automakers are a long way
from becoming competitive in the United States.
lndeed, there's not a Chinese car to date
that has passed U.S. emissions and safety tests.
This video, though,
of a Chinese car spectacularly failing a Russian safety test
can result in misleading conclusions.
For one thing, the Chinese are very quick learners.
But there's a far more compelling argument to be made
for the quality of Chinese cars ultimately headed our way.
Here's Bill Pollock,
who plans to import the first Chinese cars
to the United States early next year
at a price 20% below any comparable vehicle.
The government knows that if any single manufacturer
brings a vehicle into North America that has issues,
it's gonna kill it for everybody.
They will not allow that to happen.
KOPPEL: And the Chinese government has a vision,
a strategic plan for the automobile industry --
theirs and ours.
They have seen what the automobile culture did
to and for the United States,
and they believe it will do something comparable for China.
Here again, Mei-Wei Cheng of Ford China.
Are we gonna see a day when Fords being built in China
are being driven in the United States?
Our main focus and the long-term strategies
focus on this wonderfully and high-growth market -- China.
-That's our first priority. -l heard that. l got that.
lf we can satisfy the demand of the Chinese consumer,
then obviously we will consider export those vehicle
to those market that has the demand for the vehicle
that we've built here in China.
You must know what your long-range plans are,
and those long-range plans, at some point or another,
include selling cars that are produced here in China overseas.
As l said, when we have the capacity and the cost advantage,
we will consider opportunity to expand our marketplace
in markets that may want to have these products.
The world we're looking at right now really is --
l mean, as far as the business community is concerned --
lt's got nothing to do with national loyalty anymore.
lt's just an international business --
wherever you can do business.
l mean, do you even consider
that you're working for an American company?
l'm working for a global company
because Ford Motor Company has a presence
in many, many countries across the globe.
So we are there, looking at the market opportunity,
the demand of the consumer.
ln the old days,
the line used to be the old General Motors line, you know?
"What's good for General Motors is good for the USA."
That world is gone.
The only thing l can say is that in many way,
Ford Motor Company is a global company.
We need to be competitive on a global basis, and we are.
KOPPEL: The name of the game is capitalism.
Who would've thought that China of all countries
would be so good at it?
The Chinese economy is racing into the 21 st century
on the back of the automobile industry.
Mobility is bringing growth and expansion
and corruption.
[ Singing in Chinese ]
KOPPEL: You know what this is all about -- the chorus?
[ Singing in Chinese ]
KOPPEL: The smoke machine?
The cute kids?
lt's all about fighting corruption.
And if the Broadway production values don't do the job,
the Chinese have an even more compelling piece
of anti-corruption propaganda.
[ Sorrowful music plays ]
Here's a look at what happens to the folks who get caught --
with a background of sobbing violins,
in case you missed part of the message.
And this is the audience they're targeting --
the inspectors who regulate the businessmen,
the ones most vulnerable to payoffs and kickbacks.
What did we find out?
lt isn't working,
and we'll tell you why in our next program.