But Jianghuai wants to grow. And the Slovaks certainly are experts at new assembly plants, with three huge ones.

Slovakia abuts the three other central European countries with multiple car plants – the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary -- an industrial concentration of 13 mostly new assembly operations sometimes called Detroit East. 

Any new plant anywhere is a Herculean task. Slovakia adds its own twist. After touring the construction sites of both the PSA/Peugeot-Citroen plant in Trnava and Kia's in Zilina, I have one suggestion for Jianghuai.

You can ask Slovakia for a lot. It has tech-savvy workers, a business-friendly government and a deep desire to catch up after two generations behind the Iron Curtain. Slovakia will build roads and utility infrastructure, forgive taxes, even train your workers.

Just don't screw with the dirt boss.

Really, the dirt boss. 

Slovakia is mostly Carpathian Mountains. Less than 30 percent of the country is arable land. Topsoil is precious, legally considered "a national treasure." Any site large enough and flat enough to hold an assembly plant is farm land.

So if you build a plant in Slovakia, you painstakingly collect that topsoil and carefully move it to other farms. The government's dirt boss makes sure you do it right.

The Slovak dirt bosses I've met were earnest, energetic and extremely detail oriented. They knew where every load of dirt leaving the site was headed.

Such devotion to the soil makes sense in a developing economy. Every euro not spent on importing food is available for machine tools.

Slovakia is even more serious about dirt than tax money. After a minister overpromised to widen the mountain-ridge main road between Trnava and Zilina to win the Kia plant, chagrinned Slovaks paid for the road. A better deal for Slovakia would have been to build the Kia plant if Kia built the road.

So for anybody planning an assembly plant there: Ask Slovaks for the moon financially, but treat their soil with respect.