Netflix’s ‘American Factory’ Isn’t Very Chinese
The documentary portrays a harsh workplace culture that’s increasingly out of fashion in China itself.
Fuyao employees in the U.S. were introduced to Chinese manufacturing culture.
Photographer: Ty Wright/BloombergThere were no American saviors for the General Motors Co. plant that closed in Moraine, Ohio in December 2008 -- only a Chinese one. In 2016, Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co. Ltd., a three-decade-old auto glass company, opened a production line in the old GM facility. As depicted in "American Factory," a new Netflix documentary, that transformation introduced China's highly efficient, top-down, low-wage methods of production to an American workforce grown soft on high wages, benefits and employer-employee collaboration. In the end, Chinese factory culture wins out over unionization, worker rights and the U.S. middle-class.
The irony is that the work culture displayed in the film is increasingly obsolete in China itself. Thanks to rising expectations, Chinese factories can no longer operate with the impunity that allowed them to grow during China's extraordinary economic expansion. Instead, they find themselves struggling to recruit employees -- and improving wages, benefits and working conditions to retain those who remain. Fuyao Glass isn't the future; it's an artifact from China's industrializing past.