China's 'Dark Factories' Run With Lights Off—Can the World Compete?

As President Trump pushes to bring American factory jobs back, CNN's Mike Valerio takes viewers inside a Chinese "dark factory" that operates with the lights off and only a fraction of the workers. The segment, part of the Meanwhile in Asia program, examines how automation is reshaping manufacturing in China and what that means for global competition. The report is structured around three questions: what these dark factories look like from the inside, what automation is doing to the Chinese job market, and whether America can realistically bring manufacturing jobs back in an era of increasing robotization. The factory visit illustrates a model that hardly needs humans to keep production running. The discussion connects China's push toward automated production with the political debate in the United States over manufacturing employment, offering a comparative look at how technology is changing the factory floor on both sides of the Pacific.