“American Factory” is the first film that Barack and Michelle Obama’s company Higher Ground Productions released with Netflix. It is a documentary about a plant in Dayton, Ohio, that makes windshields. But what the filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert are really showing is the economic and social issues that converge when the Chinese company Fuyao moves into a former General Motors plant in Ohio. It is a gripping, unsettling and heartbreaking story that is set in a factory that turns out to be not so American.
The story opens with a short and teary reminiscence of the General Motors car plant’s shutdown (2008) that shows us what has happened to the inhabitants of Dayton and foreshadows the difficult times ahead. Then, the mood changes when in 2014, the Chinese auto glass manufacturer Fuyao buys the plant, promising investment, and hundreds of new jobs to struggling the residents of Dayton, Ohio. Fuyao and its chairman Cao Dewang are rewarded with euphoric praise and more than $6m in subsidies from Ohio state taxpayers. So then, what happens when the eager and grateful American workers, who are in desperate need of jobs clash with the Communist mode of labor introduced by the Chinese factory where workers are just cogs in the wheel?
In a short interview with the Obamas that accompanies the documentary, it is mentioned that Bognar and Reichert spent several years making “American Factory.” This commitment is evident in its multifaceted storytelling and the obvious trust they earned. The filmmakers do not villainize anyone, the moral speaks for itself. By the end you sense the message and that is what matters. The documentary is politically revealing without being moralistic or persuasive, but intelligently connecting the sociopolitical dots.
There are many awkward disagreements and excruciating culture clash moments throughout the story. For their launch ceremony the Chinese forget the word “the” in the company’s motto: “Marching Forward To Be World Leading Glass Provider” which the Americans do not dare correct. Other uncomfortable culture differences become evident in many policy meetings about understanding Americans better, in which Chinese managers say that Americans are overly confident because they were praised as babies, therefore the Chinese workers must stroke their egos. And when the American workers go on their instructional trip to China, they witness a shocking discipline and speed at the Fuyao Shanghai factory which is almost military like, and they are left feeling disturbingly stunned.
Because the story is of a Chinese factory on American soil, the Americans seem to be at a bigger loss compared to the Chinese workers. Each group will have to make big sacrifices, however. The Americans go from making over $29 an hour, to $12.84 at Fuyao. The Chinese, including the bosses and imported workers, are required to attend classes by their supervisors to understand Americans. They learn the US is a very casual place: “you can even joke about the president.” But their output at the factory is pitiful. American workers, the Chinese managers observe, are “pretty slow. They have fat fingers.”
What is not directly pointed at in the documentary is the ways in which the Chinese motivations for work differ from the American motivations. The Chinese economy only opened to the world in 1978. In the mid-20th century, china was rising from extreme poverty and 200-year continuous wars, with 90% or more people uneducated, starving and barely surviving. Only 4 decades later did China experienced a giant economic development; however, caution remains a big part the Chinese work ethic uncertain future. So, people in china work so hard, because they know life is not easy.
Fortunately, not everything in this experience is unpleasant, and on the instructional trip to China, Americans experience an overwhelming sense of warmth and love towards their employers’ culture. “We are one! We are one!” says one American, in tears, to Chinese dancers after a performance. This same friendship is observed at Fuyao Ohio branch between the American workers who open their homes for dinners, weekends, and major holidays to the lonely, imported workers who had to leave their families behind to come make a living.
It is these men and women, the workers, whose optimism and then dissatisfaction give the documentary its bleak and emotional plot line. As Americans are asked to work harder and longer hours by the Chinese managers, tension rises. Chairman Cao is very displeased with trade unionists because in China, they are representative of the communist state. Consequently, he feels threatened and authorizes a campaign to disrupt the movement. Something clearly taken for granted in China; Fuyao has never had to deal with worker retaliation before. The union becomes the narrative backbone for “American Factory” in the suspenseful weeks of rallies, management meetings, and the angry anti-union rhetoric of some employees leading up to the vote, which is the climax of the film.
In arguably one of the documentary's most poignant scenes, Chairman Cao leads us through a lavish mansion in his hometown as he asserts that the purpose of life is to work, and this hard dedication to work is evident throughout the film on the Chinese part. It poses a stark contrast to the American lifestyle that utilizes work as a means to an end – to earn money to splurge on life luxuries. Chairman Cao’s disappointment in the end foreshadows his plan to replace many of Fuyao American factory workers with robots. However, what is untold but evident by the end of the documentary is that automation or no automation, China will continue to be cheap for the next decades. There simply is no competition to China and Southeastern Asia’s current manufacturing which offer a deadly combination of low price and engineering, posing an eventual threat to businesses in other nations worldwide.
The world is interconnected, and as people in developing countries increasingly work harder to create better lives for themselves, so does a demand for cheaper labor increase. That is globalization and it is inevitable. “American Factory” is an example of positive international relations demonstrating the complexity of the economic and social issues and it is a reminder that capitalism is always double-edged sword. And as the film suggests in a frightening prelude, a looming common enemy for the world is approaching – the new era of automation cutting across workers. This is a definite must-watch documentary, very insightful.