VIDEO. "When China arrived, it was a wave": a documentary deciphers the multiple causes of France's deindustrialization

How did France become "a country that no longer knows how to manufacture what it consumes"? This question has been resonating for many years, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic, which revealed the loss of French sovereignty in the health sector. At the time, France was short of surgical masks and feared drug shortages. However, the pharmaceutical industry was far from the only one affected. Steel, automotive, chemical, textile... Many industrial sectors have seen their factories gradually close over the past fifty years, as factories were relocated to emerging countries.

A documentary entitled Who Killed French Industry?, directed by Ella Cerfontaine and broadcast Sunday, May 25 at 9:05 p.m. on France 5, attempts to identify those responsible for the deindustrialization of the territory. From Arnaud Montebourg, Minister of the Economy between 2012 and 2014, to workers at the Renault factory, and Pascal Lamy, former head of the World Trade Organization (WTO), this inventory-style investigation gives voice to actors and witnesses who orchestrated or suffered the decline of the French industrial sector.

The documentary recounts how the 1973 oil crisis marked the end of a prosperous era for France during which industry reigned supreme. But it underlines how the political choices of successive governments, both left and right, employer strategies, the race for profitability, the shift of the economy towards services and the tertiary sector , globalization and the arrival of China on the world market are all reasons that caused the deindustrialization of France and profoundly transformed its economy and its society.

The film describes how this neoliberal wave swept across the world in the 1980s. Starting in the United Kingdom, where Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979, it reached Ronald Reagan's United States and even France under the socialist François Mitterrand. Within a few years, the free-market doctrine established itself as the dominant ideology, explains economist and European MP Aurore Lalucq in the documentary. States cut spending, privatized public companies, and deregulated large swathes of the national economy, confirms Henri Proglio, former head of Veolia and EDF, a partner at the American audit and consulting firm Arthur Andersen between 1973 and 2004, who shares his expertise.

France is one of the most affected Western countries. According to the INSEE , the share of manufacturing in the gross domestic product fell from 17% to 11% between 1995 and 2017 in France. This post-industrial era has been taking hold over the years. But it was above all China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 that accelerated the trend, the documentary describes. The opening of China's immense domestic market excited Westerners who hoped to export their products on a massive scale, but disillusionment quickly set in.

"China very quickly became a huge producer. Much faster than anyone had ever thought," acknowledges Pascal Lamy, former director of the WTO. It was difficult for Europeans to imagine that Chinese economic growth would be so dazzling, describe the protagonists of the documentary. China quickly became "the world's factory" and exported everything. Its low-cost labor and its prices, which were lower than those of Western competitors, made it extremely competitive. French industry was hit hard.

Factories are closing, causing a terrible social breakdown. Between 1995 and 2017, France lost 900,000 manufacturing jobs, a drop of 27%, according to INSEE. France is much more affected than its neighbors. The decline is 13% in the European Union and 6% in Germany. " A whole series of French companies or industrial sectors will find themselves in increased competition with countries with low labor or production costs, so we will accentuate deindustrialization," summarizes Jérôme Fourquet, director of the Opinion and Business Strategies department at the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP).

Arnold Montebourg, the former Minister of Economy and Industrial Recovery between 2012 and 2014, under the presidency of François Hollande, remembers the extent of the damage: " When China arrived, it was a tidal wave . We lost textiles, leather goods, capital goods, machine tools, we lost everything (...) This abandonment was a political abandonment." Priority was given at the time to consumption to the detriment of production, as Pascal Lamy attests. "This international division of labor, which results from the opening of trade, is very effective for the consumer and it is very painful for some workers," he concedes.

3 min

China is not only manufacturing products designed by Western companies, it is also starting to design products in cutting-edge sectors, such as the automobile industry, at a much lower cost than in Europe and is winning over many markets, observes David Cousquer, a specialist in economic data on employment and investment in France and creator of Trendeo. "The Chinese have caught up with [the West] at great speed and have excelled in new sectors ," notes Geoffroy Roux de Bézeux, president of Medef from 2018 to 2023. "Today, practically everything electronic is no longer manufactured in Europe and is 100% manufactured in Asia."

Offshoring, factory closures, and layoffs are on the rise. Between 1980 and 2007, French industry saw its employment decline from 5.3 million to 3.4 million, a 36% drop, according to the Treasury . Industry's share of total employment fell from 24% to 13%.

These successive job losses are having a profound impact on a working class that is losing its bearings, notes Fabien Gache, a former Renault worker. "It creates frustration, suffering... People will tell you: 'But I lost my job because it was the Romanians who stole it from us, it was the Turks, it was the Moroccans.' (...) And that is the breeding ground for voting for the extreme right, for turning people away from the causes that are generating their problems," he confides in the documentary.

In recent years, successive international crises have made leaders realize that France must reconnect with its industrial independence. The current occupant of the Élysée Palace, Emmanuel Macron, has made his reindustrialization plan one of the pillars of his policy.

The documentary "Who Killed French Industry?" directed by Ella Cerfontaine is broadcast Sunday, May 25 at 9:05 p.m. on France 5 and can be viewed on the france.tv platform.