It is what you think it is – and the feds agree. The Department of Homeland Security is currently investigating Chinese-owned Fuyao Glass America for “potential human smuggling” as well as labor and financial crimes.
In 2016, Fuyao Glass America, already operational in Illinois, Michigan, and South Carolina, opened the world’s largest automobile glass production factory in Moraine, Ohio. Fuyao spent $600M refurbishing a former GM factory – that had been shuttered due to the overall effects of outsourcing to China – but also received taxpayer-funded and privately-funded “new business” incentives from various Ohio state agencies including “millions” from JobsOhio.
A chorus of pro-CCP and other self-serving stakeholder voices proclaimed this development “special” and a formula for “the future.” U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, noted that he had worked “to require bidders on the property to demonstrate a clear benefit to Moraine” to ensure the ultimate match would be proper. Fuyao had been looking for a site, and the City of Moraine had been looking for a business-tenant; with Rep. Turner’s blessing, the state of Ohio paid for the wedding and the down-payment on the house.
In 2019 Netflix released American Factory, a documentary about Fuyao that was purchased by the Obamas post-production for their Higher Ground Productions project. The documentary reveals abusive labor practices, anti-union (and illegal) employee terminations, and translated derogatory statements made by the Chinese management – in a private, Chinese-only training meeting – regarding the American employees. All against the backdrop of Fuyao management’s complaints of difficulty achieving profitability at this site – as if this justifies communist-style corporate management. Somehow the film, a disorienting mixture of feel-good schmaltz alongside nauseating communist corruption, seems like a limited hangout designed to resign the audience to the bad news.
The only negative outcome from the rather damning expose was an investigation and $120k fine from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for Fuyao’s wrongful termination of three employees over attempted union formation. JobsOhio retracted a previous statement celebrating Fuyao’s victory over union formation. Ohio Governor Mike Dewine floated the idea of withdrawing Fuyao’s tax incentives based on NLRB’s findings, but this did not come to pass.
Fuyao Glass America and its parent company, Fuyao Glass Industry Group, went on to release various statements in August 2020 that, together, suggest that 400 employees had been laid off from Fuyao’s 2,300-employee Moraine factory over the prior year. Ohio requires layoffs of this magnitude to be officially reported, but Fuyao evidently failed to do this. The yard baths cometh.
Beginning in 2022, an individual in a Moraine-adjacent town reported seeing 25 men living in the house next door. Since then, multiple people across several towns have come forward with many such observations. One set of housemates appeared wearing t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops, carrying belongings in shopping bags, followed by “running suits” after a trip in the van, followed by Fuyao outfits after another week.
Altogether, 27 residential properties were raided by DHS this summer, as part of the Fuyao investigation. Quick math using the 1-2 dozen Fuyao-uniform-clad inhabitants observed in the respective homes suggests that this is an imported workforce that replaced the 400 laid-off employees.
The properties themselves are owned by a connected network of people and LLCs, all related to Fuyao and to the FBI investigation. These include Hanbing Yu, who owns three of the raided homes; and HELI Real Estate Trading Company, incorporated by Guo Qiang Lin, who lives on the same street as the address of HELI Real Estate. The latter owns 10 properties in the area, while Guo Qiang Lin personally owns another property that was raided by the FBI. Yet other properties the FBI raided are owned by companies that are in turn owned by HELI Real Estate or Guo Qiang Lin.
Transport vans, captive workers, and strange yard activities all smack of a seemingly unrelated phenomenon: the “Triad Weed” Chinese transnational criminal organization in Maine. For the past year, Steve Robinson of the Maine Wire has produced a stunning series of reporting on this Biblical-level infestation of foreign illicit drugs and bondage.
Out-of-state Chinese foreign nationals purchase networks of houses in the state of Maine (often through the same bank in NY). The houses are retro-fitted into marijuana “grow houses” generating millions in profit per year (for the crime ring, and likely ultimately the CCP) selling cheap, toxic-chemical-laden weed on the black market.
The indentured marijuana workers are captives in these rural Maine houses. They receive supplies from vans that arrive periodically to pick up finished product. Some of Mr. Robinson’s articles also reveal excessive surveillance cameras on the properties, makeshift beds, allegations of related sex trafficking, and, in one case, workers attempting to catch seagulls for food on the dock of a refurbished cannery used as a grow house.
For the many other fascinating and disturbing details, check out the Triad Weed series. For now, it is worth noting, through the lens of regard for human life, the unmistakable affinity between a CCP-linked criminal organization and the “American” subsidiary of a Chinese business.
American workers were offered their old jobs back in their old factory, but for half the pay and a yet smaller measure of workplace safety. Then they were discriminated against, discouraged from forming a union, and some were wrongfully terminated. Hundreds more were laid off. What can only be described as forced laborers were shoehorned into dozens of homes in the Dayton area, which cannot house American families. All so that a Chinese company can vertically integrate, collect profits, and avoid tariffs.
“The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail” (Deut. 28:43-44) comes to mind. But only if the foreign foe imports its own serfs as a new class between their supreme profiteers and our unemployed technician class.
These communist Chinese tactics are not consistent with American values. They do not belong here. Heritage Americans are being displaced from our legacy factories and homes, so they can be replaced with forced laborers and makeshift barracks for CCP wealth formation. It’s colonization, smuggled in as commerce.
Many questions hang in the air, but they are all rhetorical. We know all the answers. As my father used to say, “businesses will do whatever you let them get away with.”
The conclusion of DHS’s investigation will be instructive regarding whether the federal government can call a slave a slave; and what Rep. Turner, Governor Dewine, JobsOhio, and the rest of the subnational network of Chinese importers will do about it. And more broadly, what Americans will need to do if these institutions fail us in yet another of the increasingly obvious tests of the current times.
