Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 25

MAKE FREE

BY CORY DOCTOROW

Untouched by Human Hands

I spent most of 2008 researching my novel For the Win, which is largely set in the factory cities of South China’s Pearl River Delta. If you own something stamped MADE IN CHINA (and you do!), chances are it was made in one of these cities, where tens of millions of young women have migrated since the combination of Deng Xiao Ping’s economic reforms and the World Trade Organization agreement set in motion the largest migration in human history.

It’s difficult to characterize the products of these factories: everything from high-priced designer goods to the cheapest knockoff originates there (on average, one container per second leaves South China for America, every second of every hour of every ...