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'American Factory' Shows What Happens When One Multibillion Dollar Chinese Company Opens Shop In An Ohio Town

This article is more than 4 years old.

In 2014, a Chinese billionaire named Cao Dewang bought a former GM plant in Dayton, Ohio, and spent two years and half a billion dollars refurbishing it to be part of his global empire of automotive glass manufacturing, Fuyao Group. The factory was sold to the people of Dayton as an act of largess by a benevolent foreign investor, generously restoring prosperity to the region by creating 2,000 new jobs, many of which went to those who'd lost their previous jobs when the GM plant closed in 2008, amid the global financial crisis.

But not everyone was buying it. At the opening ceremony, in 2016, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown publicly embarrassed Chairman Cao, as he is known, by encouraging Fuyao Glass America's new employees to consider unionizing. Brown was banned from the factory's premises for his remarks, and once FGA was in operation, Chairman Cao threatened that if the workers did manage to unionize, he'd shut the place down.

American Factory, a new documentary from the Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, tells the story of FGA's entry onto U.S. soil as a tale of two countries, of clashing cultures and work ethics, and of a ruthless brand of late-stage capitalism that has seen Chinese companies attempt to assert their dominance around the world.

Chairman Cao comes across as an autocrat with no compunction about flouting workers' rights and safety standards, but it's the American executives who seem the most heartless. Cao, who is in his 70s, grew up in a Communist regime, and says he would get so hungry as a child that he'd scream in agony. As far as he's concerned, his employees are lucky to have jobs at all, and they should be grateful. The American executives, on the other hand, were raised in a country where people have rights, and to willfully ignore them in service of the bottom line is a choice, not a default.

When the film crew goes to a Fuyao factory in China with a team of American supervisors from the FGA factory, the contrast is brought into sharp relief. The Americans watch with a mixture of bewilderment and awe as the Chinese workers chant propagandistic Fuyao slogans before each shift, and then dive into their menial tasks with the unquestioning diligence of machines. Their counterparts back in Dayton, meanwhile, seem lazy and inefficient, but also to possess a sense of agency. When the factory doesn't meet OSHA safety standards, or they're expected to work without breaks or overtime, they complain. This presents a problem for Cao and his American executives, leading to a war between those pushing to unionize and those who recognize that a unionized workforce means a loss of absolute control. This, as far as Cao is concerned, cannot happen.

American Factory began as a 40-minute short for HBO titled The Last Truck, which documented the 2008 closing of the GM plant. In 2014, when Chairman Cao bought that plant, he wanted to commission a documentary about the first American outpost of his global operation, which accounts for 23 percent of the automotive glass produced around the world. Given their previous work, Reichert and Bognar were obvious choices, and they were on board. But they had some requests: they wanted full access to board meetings, the factory floor, time with Chairman Cao and absolute independence from the Fuyao Group. This would not be a commissioned film.

The Fuyao Group, miraculously, agreed to the terms, which suggests either ignorance or hubris on the company's part. Reichert and Bognar's verite style takes you everywhere they went. You see what they saw and hear what they heard, and they saw and heard a lot. Much of it was damning, but some of it was funny and even heartening. FGA brought 200 Chinese workers to Dayton to work in tandem with the Americans, and despite the barriers between them, real friendships were forged. Those scenes of backyard barbecues and weekend fishing trips offer some of the few moments of respite in this otherwise bleak account of what happens when a handful of haves attempt to exploit thousands of have-nots, and of the implications of China's rapid encroachment on foreign markets.

Reichert and Bognar began filming in early 2015, and for the most part, they leave the macro political climate out of it. This is a film about the people in the film — the worker who made $29 an hour at GM and now makes $12; the one who had to move into her sister's basement when the GM plant closed, then got her own apartment when she started working for Fuyao, and then lost that job when she joined the effort to unionize; the Chinese workers who live four to an apartment and send as much of their earnings back home as possible.

It's also about Chairman Cao, who proves to be far more human than his treatment of his workers might suggest. He isn't a monster; he's just an old man who grew up in rural China at a time when survival was the exception, not the rule. And yet, he says that when he looks out at the modern world that's enabled him to acquire such vast wealth, he feels a sense of loss for the simpler days of his youth. It's almost as if Cao, like those who work for him in his Chinese factories, is just fulfilling the role he's been assigned.

American Factory ends with a glimpse to the future, when automation will replace many of the jobs the human workers currently perform. It's a depressing film, yes, but it seems that the sequel, so to speak, will be far worse.

A Netflix original documentary, American Factory is the first release from Barack and Michelle Obama's production company, Higher Ground Productions, in collaboration with Participant Media. It will be released Wednesday, August 21st.