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Culture Clash at a Chinese-Owned Plant in Ohio
- nodesocket 9y agoMakes absolute sense for Fuyao to move where their customers are. I also applaud the US growth and job creation they are creating in the process.
- jacquesm 9y agoThose jobs were historically there to begin with, then tooling + process + jobs were shipped overseas because that was cheaper, the resulting trade surplus made it possible for the Chinese to ship the factory back to the United States. The big question then is can they remain profitable in the long run if they do things the US way, and if they can why couldn't the same plant be owned and operated by Americans?
- mjevans 9y agoAs an American, my observation is that we're allergic to logic and long term planning/investment.
- cylinder 9y agoAsk a bunch of American investors to help with your glass plant in Ohio. They will suggest you call them back when you're ready to build the "Airbnb for Glass Factories."
- nickpsecurity 9y ago"and if they can why couldn't the same plant be owned and operated by Americans?" You already know the answer to that. It's why they shipped the jobs overseas in the first place. In many cases, the workers even keep voting for the kinds of people that do it. I especially found it amusing that Trump was appealing as a capitalist to workers whose jobs were lost due to capitalism like this. Many of these areas are self-defeating. Not all but many.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoWorkers voted for Trump because he was the only candidate who offered to help them, regardless if he was lying. I wouldn't be amused; it's a canary in a coal mine (no pun intended).
- nickpsecurity 9y agoThis is also true. They were foolish to vote for the kind of person who left them jobless. They thought it wise to vote for the only person promising them something. The latter happened because they're too superficial: most districts vote out the honest, well-performing folks early. That superficial "he-said-she-said" stuff is what they need to stop doing the most.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 9y ago> They were foolish to vote for the kind of person who left them jobless. Clinton's policies would've left them just as jobless (by way of her supporting the TPP, finishing off those crippled by NAFTA, which was a project of Clinton's husband during his presidential stint). When in doubt, vote for the person who says they'll burn everything down, which appears to be on schedule.
- nickpsecurity 9y agoA great, Democrat example of: "most districts vote out the honest, well-performing folks early." Leave us to Trump or Hillary by the end of it. Russian roulette has better odds of success.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoI'd like to point out that the DNC argued in a court room that it's totally within their right to pick their candidate while smoking cigars in a back room, votes be damned; nobody voted for that. https://medium.com/theyoungturks/dnc-we-can-legally-choose-candidate-over-cigars-in-back-room-e3026730e252 https://medium.com/theyoungturks/dnc-we-can-legally-choose-c... We could have voluntarily decided that, ‘Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way,’” Bruce Spiva, lawyer for the DNC, said during a court hearing in Carol Wilding, et al. v. DNC Services Corp
- arthur_trudeau 9y agoIt's somewhat surprising for the NYT to put forward the proposition that ethnocentrism and disregard for worker safety is a part of Chinese culture, but I guess I'll take their new wokeness as a sign of progress.
- shangxiao 9y agoI think it's worth pointing out that this appears to be mainly Chinese culture from the mainland. Chinese from other areas like Hong Kong and Taiwan seem to be completely different. When I visited Taipei I was pleasantly surprised to see how polite these people were, they lined up in queues to board their subway!
- lacampbell 9y agoTaiwanese people love queueing. Queueing for the train, queueing waiting for the bus, and - of course - queueing around the block to wait to eat at a 'famous' restaurant (:
- cbhl 9y agoMy Taiwanese parents were the sort to enter a large queue without knowing what it was for, because whatever was at the end of it was bound to be good.
- duncan_bayne 9y agoAre you sure they weren't English? :)
- kjs3 9y agoI've always heard the queue joke about the Germans.
- dis-sys 9y agooh, then they should visit the mainland and start queuing for a licence plate in Shanghai - 18 months waiting time on average, $15k cost. crazy? They can also renounce their ROC citizenship and start queuing for an apartment in Beijing or Shanghai, 60 months to become eligible and $1m to get a 2bedroom one next to a noisy main road in an area traditionally considered as poor neighbourhood.
- nfriedly 9y agoI drive past this plant on occasion, and I think it's been a generally positive impact on the area. It was kind of sad when the old GM plant shut down and sat empty for several years.
- bduerst 9y agoGlass is heavy and brittle, making it both expensive and difficult to ship. Many glass mills need to be within a certain mile radius of the factories they supply because of this. NYT missed this in the article.
- litany 9y agoYou're right, the article didn't mention difficulties shipping glass. It did mention that they wanted to be close to their customers though. I'm not really sure that your detail would have added anything as the article wasn't really about glass manufacturing. It could have been added with one or two sentences though.
- bduerst 9y agoIn context to the article, my point is that Fuyao is a poor example. The author makes it seem like Fuyao's decision to build in Ohio is part of a larger trend across verticals, when in reality the nature of the glass industry demands Fuyao building local to suppliers.
- hourislate 9y agoThe Chinese ship plenty of glass to NA. The weight is of no consequence since freight is charged per volume (40' container, 20' container). Typically a 40 ft container from China to NY State is about $3600-$4200 depending on the Logistics Company and time of year. Many of the Condo's in Toronto, Canada (condo capital of the world) are faced with Chinese glass. Glass is typically compromised when it is not packed or stored correctly. It is actually quite durable and is shipped from all over the world. A good example is the glass Apple used for its new campus, it came from Germany. I think the problem here is "Just in Time" delivery to the Auto Manufacturers. It takes about 12 days on the water and another 5 on rail to reach the rust belt or east coast. So that is probably why they decided to start producing in the USA so they can meet tighter production and delivery schedules and take shipping lines/ports out of the equation.
- Natsu 9y ago
- lacampbell 9y agoI am glad that in some countries there is still an ethos of standing up for your own citizens. I couldn't imagine any action being taken against a Chinese company for discriminatory hiring practices in New Zealand or Australia, where such discrimination is rampant, not only in employment but also in real estate.
- andreiw 9y agoI dunno. Reading this article left a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn't the Chinese that turned a large portion of industrial America into a rusty meth-infused wasteland, yet it is the Chinese that are opening these factories. I applaud a desire to maintain safety standards, but if it wasn't for Fuyao, there wouldn't be anyone to unionize, you know?
- it_learnses 9y agoyes i suppose they should be more grateful rather than whine about pesky things such as safety control...
- vthallam 9y agoSo, that's what all it comes down to I guess. Like, be happy because there are jobs in the first place or unionise, make them accountable for all kinds of regulations and give them a hard time? Maybe the Chinese or perhaps anyone wouldn't have invested in the first place if they think they can not generate enough profits to sustain, so giving an easy pass for safety standards or any regulations would encourage this.
- TheBobinator 9y agoOver the long-term, the way Americans are fighting Communism is by introducing capital to modernize China which in turn should raise a middle class and cause them to evaluate capitalism on its merits. This is part of that struggle, and an attempt to avoid a bloody war if China were to decide on rapidly modernizing like Japan did pre-WW2. So I'd say China can take their trade and their factories and shove it, but that wouldn't be playing the culture war card. The Chinese expect to open plants here and run them in the same subjugated way they do in China because that's their culture. They view the US as something to conquer. What they're going to realize very quickly is that this endeavor is a lot like trying to herd cockroaches who know how to use gunpowder. Before you know it, they've laid traps you don't even know about in the walls. Trump's a warning shot across the bow of foreign powers and the establishment that the American public aren't going to put up with the lack of a social contract and continuous exploitation forever. He's not going to get a lot done, but that's part of the point; he's showing them that there are repercussions to economic warfare and subjugation. I doubt the plant is going to be there in a few years. They are going to deal with everything from EEOC lawsuits to unions being unreasonable because of the way promotions are done. They won't be able to shake that. Period. The only way to shake a union is to shut down long enough everyone leaves or treat people well enough they don't feel the need.
- tuna-piano 9y agoChina is a gigantic investor in the USA. Whenever you hear the term "trade deficit" that the US has to China, there is an identical amount in "investment surplus" that the US gets from China. That investment is everywhere - in our stock market, in our government debt, in our real estate and in our Ohio Windshield plants. Every time you buy an iPhone, you're handing China hundreds of dollars which they then invest in America. We very literally gave them a Windshield plant in exchange for consumer goods. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/05/16/that-china-trade-deficit-comes-back-to-the-us-110-billion-into-real-estate-alone/#76342d974653 https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/05/16/that-chi...
- nickpsecurity 9y agoThe author of your link keeps repeating that things will balance simply because they will balance. That sounds like "what I say is true because I say it is true." Is there proof of this beyond the author's mere assertions? Also, the author says we pay for stuff that turns into capital for them. They use that capital to create more businesses or own more stuff here. That doesn't sound like it's going to balance for the U.S.. It sounds more like they'll progressively have more ownership, market share, and revenues over time.
- rukittenme 9y agoI suppose you could look at it in the classical economic sense. I give you $1 because I value it less than a cheeseburger. You give me a cheeseburger because you value it less than a $1. I don't think that means things even out between US and China. But I do think it means things even out overall. We may "lose" with China and "win" with others. But ultimately, as long as people are spending their own money (as they want to spend it) I can't see how a trade deficit/surplus will ever affect them.
- Spooky23 9y agoThe US model right now is is exporting cash and hard assets in exchange for mostly consumable goods. It's a pretty obvious bad idea. It's ok in the sense that it isn't a moral hazard. But it's bad in that we're exporting our wealth and hollowing out the country.
- grapeshot 9y agoReminds me of what happened in the 1980s with Japanese buyouts of American TV manufacturers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aesJTsZqm6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aesJTsZqm6c I don't know if history offers any good solutions here though.
- analyst74 9y agoOut of curiosity, is it a common practice to require foreign companies opening American branches to have a "predominantly American management corps"? I always assumed that multi-national companies tend to send executives from their headquarters for strategic decision making, and only hire local managers for execution.
- frozenport 9y agoNo it isn't common. I know of a company from Germany (optics), and another one from France (cheese?) and in both the mid management is from abroad.
- nichtich 9y agoAnd the factory is set up by the Chinese company. It would be an understandable demand to insists on local management if the Chinese bought the already existing local operation. But for a brand new operation it's a weird thing to ask.
- omegaworks 9y ago>Such lapses are common in the brutally competitive auto parts industry... but they can easily lead to amputation or even death. This is exactly why these regulations need to exist and be enforced as strictly and evenhandedly as possible. If they didn't exist, your competitors will implement any measure, including ones that compromise worker safety, to undercut your prices. Market forces will attempt to shape this industry to be the leanest it can possibly be. Capitalism can grind fungible labor into a literal pulp if it is allowed.
- fma 9y agoYep. Lack of regulation can affect more than just the employees. If that plant can pollute like they do in China - everyone in that city would all have a negative impact. The Republican administration believes regulation is bad and must be removed. It's a shame what people would believe in the name of 'jobs'.
- zhemao 9y agoFor an example of this in action, you need look no further than a few states South along the Mississippi. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-23/inside-alabama-s-auto-jobs-boom-cheap-wages-little-training-crushed-limbs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-23/inside-al...
- jbscpa 9y ago"Take This Job and Shove It" A corporate executive is assigned to help improve the efficiency of a small-town brewery in this comedy inspired by the Johnny Paycheck song. When the small town turns out to be his old hometown, however, the executive finds himself torn between his loyalties to his company and his old friends.
- MachinShinn- 9y agoDo you know why manufacturing left America? It has nothing to do with costs. It has everything to do with regulations and attitudes. If you want a manufacturing industry, workers WILL get killed on site. Workers WILL get cancer from dangerous chemicals. There's no free lunch. Everyone knows this, but somehow we care more about a high school dropout getting exposed to fumes in a factory than one that ODs on heroin because he has zero job prospects. Either blue collar workers die at 65-70 after a lifetime of work related exposure, or they die at 30 due to drug overdose. Those are your 2 and only 2 choices.
- rhcom2 9y agoWhy are those the only two options? Why can't we continue make manufacturing safer like we have been since the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire?
- someguydave 9y agoBecause at a certain point increasing safety regulation causes production under a regime to be less profitable than moving to another country with fewer safety rules. Regulators are usually not punished for destroying profit and are usually incentivized to choose safety over private profit.
- legacynl 9y agoWhat's the point in making profit if it gets people killed? What do you think the ultimate goal is? More money? Better lives?
- k_sze 9y ago"Fuyao faces [...] a lawsuit by a former manager who says he was let go in part because he is not Chinese." Somehow the opposite scenario could sound absurd in China. Imagine "General Motors in China faces a lawsuit by a former manager who says he was let go in part because he is not white." I'm not implying anything. I'm just pointing out that for some reason, that scenario could sound absurd, even if irrationally so. It might not have to do with differences of the judicial systems, but with differences in value and prejudice between the two cultures.