“There’s a culture in the US where children are showered with encouragement. So everyone who grows up in the US is overconfident. We need to use our wisdom to guide them and help them. Because we are better than them.”
― Jeff Lui, President, Fuyao
Over the weekend I came across a riveting documentary, American Factory, about the Chinese-based Fuyao company investing in and retooling a closed General Motors plant for auto-glass manufacturing. Roughly 2,000 Chinese team members relocated to work with American hires.
I anticipated a retread of the challenges of unions versus bottom line efficiency, or automation forcing companies to dismiss factory workers. Instead, the story focuses on well-intentioned people ramming into deep-seeded cultural issues.
As the story unfolds at the Dayton, Ohio plant, we peer into deeply rooted worldviews related to work, comfort, country, pride idolatry and servitude. The Chinese are company and country first. To them the billionaire owner of the Fuyao company is the Chairman or leader, spoken and bowed to with deep reverence. Production and efficiency are key, with quality of life a distant placeholder behind 12-hr days, and few if any holidays. The American workers are grateful to have jobs, albeit less than what they were paid at GM, and want favorable working conditions, a fair requirement. However, having worked at General Motors immediately after high school, I remember an air of entitlement with the union workers. The desire teetered on comfort first, value and profitability second. The fact that the the Fuyao factory was retooled from a 2008 GM plant closing, speaks to harsh global competition every country faces. The forces of capitalism are designed for profit, and if efficient and cheaper labor helps, so be it, cozy workplace be damned.
That’s the key element for me: are both sides equally wrong or right? The Chinese appear to be comfortable with a lifestyle of all work and little play. I mean who wouldn’t be motivated by dancing pixies in the film singing these lyrics at the corporate party, “May the best come, may the worst leave… (chorus) Intelligence and lean manufacturing… All industries should adopt them… Finance, service, manufacturing… (chorus) Intelligence and lean manufacturing… Technology is developing rapidly… The Information age has already arrived… Employee relation system is amazing… Great at resource integration and market response.” Yes, catchy and memorable, said no one ever.
I can’t help but think the American position is also wrong. There’s an air of pride floating throughout, a wee bit of “don’t push us too hard, we’re more fragile than the glass we make.” And woo doggie, does the Jeff Liu quote above hit a nerve. He speaks towards the end of the film, as frustrations are rising, and the Chinese management team is seeing the American gaps that need to be filled. How dare he speak such truth about us, we’re ‘Mercans, dammit! Ah, but he’s right. We are told from a young age that we can do anything we want, pursue and achieve dreams. Walk into that room like you own it! We can’t help but wreak of hubris when everyone gets a ribbon, no matter what place they finished. That’s why we’re so offended when we go to France, and they have the insolence to NOT have ice in their water!? I may picket a La Madeleine tonight on principle alone.
Pride Never Helps
The documentary reminded me of an excellent post I read Sunday, on the most famous thorn in the history of mankind. The article “Why You Have That Thorn,” is from an April, 2018 blog called Desiring God. The writer, Jon Bloom, touches on how we hate the idea of being weakened for our own good. God gives us a thorn(s) like He did Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, to keep our almighty egos in check. The theology is fascinating, but I’ll stick with the topic at hand in relation to America and China, or any country with a significant GDP. Our pride towards country, and more importantly, towards self, is the thing that gets us in trouble. EVERY. TIME. It often begins with an “I deserve (fill in blank),” a thing or status you really don’t deserve, because where did we get the idea in the first place.
“Pride, in all its manifestations, is our most pervasive sin and the most dangerous to us spiritually. Anything God gives us to keep us humble and prayerfully dependent on him is a great gift — even when that gift causes us pain.” — Jon Bloom
Which reminded me of the viral clip of Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper, where Colbert in a most tender gesture, mentions that the death of his father was a gift, and beautifully unwraps the “why?” His worldview starts from the Christian ethos that this life will include suffering, because Christ suffered for us, as a means to get us to our real life, the eternal one after we pass from here. We don’t deserve 24/7 bunnies and sunshine, we don’t deserve happiness. But to own that reality, you have to adopt a worldview that is not Chinese, not American, it’s not of this world to begin with.
The fact is, our pride is a massive barrier in remembering that our very existence is a gift. In other words, we ain’t got nothin’ to do with the begat. I didn’t choose me, make me, or birth me. I happened because the Lord willed it. Nope, wasn’t science. Science is not a thing-maker as many atheists and agnostics want to believe. Science is the study of the things being made. Our post-modern culture has pushed hard (with extensive pride), to remove the intelligent design (God) from the equation, and tried to funnel the massiveness of God as the ultimate artist, creator and engineer, in to small vials of measurement with no brain, agency or purpose. How prideful is it to think that every machine, computer, tool, clothing item, plate and cabinet, every item you see in your home was clearly designed by engineers, technologists, carpenters and machinists. But we humans, the beings that designed all that stuff, naw, we came from mud, a big explosion created us, with no strategy, no brain, only millions of years as the sole variable. How arrogant for us to lay claim as to where the totem pole ends.
I can make productivity and country my idol. I can also define my life by a posture of entitlement. Or I can choose to recognize the highest authority of Christ as the true Chairman of all things, including all the joy, and the pain in my life.
See ya next time. ML