Losers and Winners

A band of Chinese workers ("they came like ants" according to a German supervisor) disassemble a German coke refinery and ship it to China.

(You get coke (not the drink!) by burning coal until all the tarry impurities are gone. It is very useful in producing steel.)

Interaction between Germans and Chinese is intriguing -- the Chinese blithely disregard safety rules as the Germans ("old foreigners", as the Chinese call them) insist on filling out the required forms!

But questions remain. Why did the Germans surrender their plant so easily? Why didn't the Chinese simply take the blue prints?

Good interviews with German engineers and poorly-paid Chinese workers. Yet there is envy. What the chief Chinese engineer wants more than anything else besides a successful disassembly of the plant is – a Mercedes.

A great documentary.