With Fuyao's further expansion in the United States, the company expects the employment number to grow to 2,300-2,500 by the end of 2017. The Fuyao facility, the largest Chinese investment project in Ohio's history, has been widely hailed as a silver lining for the local community, as the closure of General Motor's assembly plant in 2008 had wiped out thousands of jobs. More than 2,000 people are working at a nearly 470,000-square-meter glass fabrication factory started by Fuyao Group, China's leading manufacturer of automotive glass. "Probably every family has a member that has worked either at Vanguard now, or previously."Ī similar story is unfolding in Moraine, Ohio. "Vanguard is so important to the health of the town," Randy Mitchell, president of White County Economic Development, said. In 10 years, Vanguard became Monon's largest employer, contributing some 80 percent of the local gross domestic product. And then we slowly ramped up and now we have almost 500," said Wilkerson, who started as a superintendent of the factory's production line and is now the director of manufacturing. Nothing happened here until the CIMC acquired the assets," Wilkerson told Xinhua, referring to China International Marine Containers (CIMC), a Shenzhen-based transportation equipment company, which came to Monon in 2003 and built a wholly owned subsidiary called Vanguard National Trailer Corporation. The company, along with many others in the rust-belt states, trimmed its production and went bankrupt around 2001 due to the economic slowdown, putting hundreds of local residents out of work.
Monon, the town where Wilkerson lives, saw its heyday in 1980s and 1990s, when the local trailer company HPA Monon hired as many as 400 workers, roughly one third of the town's population. Not only has he experienced the ups and downs of the industry, he also witnessed how investment from China breathed life into the local community. NEW YORK - As the United States is stepping up efforts to revive the country's old industrial states, the so-called Rust Belt, Chinese investment in the region has also entered a phase of rapid growth, creating thousands of manufacturing jobs.įifty-eight-year-old James Wilkerson has been working in the semitrailer business in the Midwestern US state of Indiana for 36 years.
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