Fascinating documentary about a Chinese corporation that invests in American manufacturing, utilizing a site and workers that had been laid off by GM. We see the inevitable culture clash between Chinese management and American workers, with the shoe on the other foot relative to outsourcing, and hear frank observations about Americans from foreign eyes. In a larger sense, we get insight into the plight of blue-collar workers from both countries, and it's a depressing view.

The Chinese management team that comes in doesn't always care about safety or the environment, but they're brutally efficient and drill their workers like an army or Communist party members, the latter of which is ironic, since the workers are so far from the ideals of communism, e.g. having real power and sharing the wealth of their labor. Meanwhile, one seriously wonders whether Americans can compete in this space, having been "spoiled" by prosperity and earlier times when they made a decent salary. You know, how dare they want a good work/life balance!

Where the documentary falls short is in not showing us the treatment of these workers under the American company beforehand; it really could have used a one hour segment on that. If it had taken the time to do so, we would have seen the same problematic behavior from American corporate executives squeezing every last drop out of their workers for the sake of the bottom line, ultimately leading to outsourcing manufacturing to overseas workers forced to work long hours, often away from their families.

The only effective means of worker power is through unionizing, and both Chinese and American executives resist it mightily, using pages from the exact same playbook, like targeting leaders and paying for propaganda campaigns. In a sense, the American executives going overseas was like finding a pool of scabs to cross the picket line. As one of the state congressmen observes in speaking to the workers, corporate profitability and treating workers respectfully via a living wage are not incompatible things, and it's shameful that they're treated that way out of unfettered greed in extreme capitalism. (Hmm, if only there was an international labor organization, lol)

It seems to me it's a system that spirals upon itself further - when you distribute the wealth so incredibly unfairly in a country, the vast majority of consumers can't afford to pay the premium for a product that was made by unionized hands. They often don't have the economic freedom to do that, or to do things like shop at a mom 'n' pop shop instead of some corporate goliath like Wal-Mart, because they're living paycheck to paycheck and every penny matters. The result is to further drive the system in the direction it's going. Suddenly the middle-class starts dwindling and people are hoping more for a miracle ala the lottery than thinking they can truly make it. The documentary doesn't mention any of this so I'm guilty of rambling on here, but it did make me think.

The ending sequence is sobering as well, showing management practically salivating over robotics taking the place of workers - you know, those pesky things on the payroll that do all of that complaining, sometimes get sick or pregnant, etc. Hey, we can drive costs down by just replacing them with machines! It's too bad no one asks any of the executives the difficult moral questions, like what the right thing to do is, or how they justify their behavior. Overall though, well done, and pretty chilling stuff.

After watching it, I was sure it would be the powerful documentary For Sama that would win the big prize at the Academy Awards, so I was shocked that it went to this film, produced by Netflix, but I was hoping it was a worthy winner when I watched it. Basically, it is about a factory in Moraine, a city near Dayton, in post-industrial Ohio. There, a shutdown General Motors Company plant is bought and reopened by Chinese entrepreneur and billionaire chairman Cao Dewang. The factory is transformed into a state-of-the-art glass-making facility, providing employment and hope for the former workforce, made up of two thousand Americans, and the many Chinese employees. Early days of hope and optimism slowly turns sour, as high-tech China clashes with working-class America. The friction mainly occurs between efficiency-driven management and safety-conscious American workers, and arguments between disgruntled workers about 12-hour shifts, no weekends off, no chit-chat and no union representation. Eventually many workers are let go and replaced by advanced high-tech machinery. This film really points out the increasingly subject to automation and globalisation. More than anything this film is a culture clash story, with everything from what happens in the workplace, including the interesting sights of glass being manufactured, to company gatherings, including a memorable sequence with the Chinese doing traditional colourful dance performances and the Americans keeping it simple and jolly with the "YMCA". I agree that it is a little longer than it perhaps should be, the fly-on-the-wall style is interesting, although you question the realism in certain moments. This is nowhere near as gripping or powerful as For Sama, so I am a little disappointed that this claimed (stole) the award, but this is a reasonably good documentary. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film. Worth watching, in my opinion!

I can't decide whether or not "American Factory" is hilarious or deeply depressing.

Hilarious because it's funny to see the culture clash between working class Americans and their Chinese counterparts (the Chinese CEO on a tour of his newly acquired American factory wants the fire alarm relocated because.....well, because it just looks bad). But depressing because it highlights the new global reality that many Americans just will not accept -- automation is eliminating entire sectors of workers around the world, and you can debate all day whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing, but what's not up for update is that it's happening either way and those that can't adapt will be left behind.

This movie also reinforced something I've noted before, which is that if you take opposing ideologies to their furthest extremes, you eventually will meet in the same place. Conservative America is absolutely horrified at the slightest hint of socialism, let alone outright Communism, and tout capitalism as one of America's guiding principles. But the Chinese company in this film shows that capitalism taken to its monstrous extreme results in a culture that might as well exist in a Communist dictatorship, where allegiance to the company substitutes for allegiance to a political leader. And faced with that, what do working class Americans want? A dose of socialism to protect them from runaway corporate interests.

Grade: A-