Column: Riding in the same car: a Marshall story for the EV age

by Xin Ping

Marshall is a small city in Michigan, the United States. If you leave downtown and follow West Michigan Avenue, pass the brick storefronts, cross the interstate, and drive another two miles, the road forks at a place called Opportunity Drive. The name feels less like a direction and more like a glimpse of the future -- one where the United States and China are learning to share the road.

REALITY CHECK: AN EXAMPLE OF "COOPETITION"

What it leads to is a nearly mile-long building -- two million square feet of gray steel and concrete. This is Ford Motor Co.'s BlueOval Battery Park Michigan, a 3 billion-USD lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery plant, expected to complete construction in the early summer of 2026. With 100 full-time staff already hired, the floor is buzzing: forklifts crisscross the factory while engineers gather around coating and winding machinery.

Look closely at those machines, and you will notice a detail: next to the blue Ford oval, some equipment bears operating instructions in Chinese characters. This is because the technology inside -- chemical recipes and manufacturing processes that enable LFP batteries at commercial scale -- is licensed from Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL) of China, the world's largest battery manufacturer.

Ford owns the plant outright, employs the workforce and controls all operations. CATL's role is confined to technology licensing: battery chemistry, process specifications, and worker training. There is no joint venture, no shared management, and no Chinese equity. This is an American factory, yet it is also, in a word, an American-Chinese one. This hyphenated identity offers an important lesson: the two industrial giants of the 21st century are increasingly building together -- not out of sentiment, but out of necessity. This is "Jinghe" in Chinese or "coopetition" -- competing while drawing on each other's strengths rather than pretending the other side does not exist.

For Marshall, a city with a population of 7,000, the plant represents a lifeline. "The future of Marshall looks better today than it has in 40 years," said Mayor Scott Wolfersberger. The plant is expected to create 1,700 permanent jobs and generate over 2 million U.S. dollars annually in property tax revenue. James Durian, CEO of the Marshall Area Economic Development Alliance, notes the community is "already experiencing the positive impact," with new hotels and businesses revitalizing the downtown.

A BUSINESS WIN OVER RIVALRY

The plant's unique structure stems from an uncomfortable reality: the United States currently has almost no domestic capacity for commercial-scale LFP batteries. While LFP batteries were first developed in U.S. labs in the late 1990s, Chinese firms commercialized and scaled them. Today, the overwhelming majority of LFP output -- from patents to processing -- is concentrated in China.

Ford's CEO Jim Farley was candid about this gap, acknowledging China's substantial lead -- a lead measured in years, not months. Lisa Drake, Ford's VP of technology platform programs, was blunt: "Legally, we have to license that LFP technology from a Chinese company to avoid infringement."

This reality needs a carefully constructed legal arrangement, which faced an existential threat during the legislative battles in 2025. Under the FY2025 budget reconciliation law, Congress repealed the clean-vehicle consumer tax credits. In its initial versions, the bill threatened to strip production credits from any facility licensing technology from a "prohibited foreign entity" -- a move that would have killed the Marshall project. Ford lobbied intensely, calling the credits a "lifeline." The final Senate version adopted an "effective control" standard. Because Ford owns and controls the facility, the plant survived.

The episode was instructive: the rhetoric of political rivalry often dissolves on the factory floor. This isn't ideological; it is the material reality of a supply chain woven over two decades. You cannot legislate away reality. You can only decide whether to leverage it for gain or ignore it at your own cost.

This pattern extends well beyond Ford. In August 2025, General Motors announced it would import LFP batteries from CATL for the 30,000-USD Chevrolet Bolt, even absorbing tariffs of roughly 80 percent. The math worked because LFP cells cost around 35 percent less than nickel-cobalt alternatives. Tesla followed a similar, quieter path, using CATL equipment for its Nevada LFP battery plant to power its Megapack energy storage systems. Beyond batteries, Ohio's Fuyao Glass America -- a Chinese-owned mainstay for a decade -- saw 2025 revenues jump 25 percent. Fuyao further invested 300 million dollars into the EV market.

"COOPETITION" FOR WIN-WIN

These are not isolated cases. Chinese capital and technology, deployed under American corporate structures, are creating American jobs. American market access is helping Chinese firms globalize. The relationship is mutual -- uneven at times, politically charged at others, yet deeply complementary.

The Marshall plant proves that the U.S.-China economic ties are not a zero-sum game. China possesses a low-cost, fastest-iterating supply chain, while the United States has innovative firms, deep capital markets, and a massive consumer base.

The Ford-CATL model offers a blueprint for rebuilding American domestic industrial capacity: American ownership plus global technology, yielding American jobs, American production, and American competitiveness. Replicating that model -- in energy storage, solar manufacturing, and many other sectors where the clean-energy transition demands speed and scale -- is not a concession to Beijing.

Workers on Opportunity Drive, Marshall, don't ask who wrote the code on their machines. They ask if the job is stable and the wage is fair. As American workers learn to operate machines with Chinese labels, they are building power for 400,000 EVs a year.

Editor's note: The author is a commentator on international affairs.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Xinhua News Agency.