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As I left, I asked Wu to show me the Lucky Gem factory, less than a quarter of a mile away. We drove cautiously past it, trying to avoid the notice of the security guards. Wu directed us to the back where he pointed out the third-floor windows behind which he used to work. Thick dust caked the glas…

The men who crowded into Wu’s room no longer worked for Lucky Gem. Wu pointed to a small man who, like the others, had slipped off his sandals at the door and who was now sitting barefoot on the concrete floor, leaning against the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him. His face was pale. Liu…

The factory was in Bailijun Village in Pingfu County, near Shenzhen. Its Hong Kong owner had moved his business here in 1984 but it was still a relatively makeshift affair. He employed around 200 workers to turn out semi-precious jewellery for the lower end of the international market. There were l…

When had it begun to change? In fact, not long after I first saw it. In 1976, Mao died and his widow was swiftly arrested. By 1979 her old enemy, Deng Xiaoping, was moving China in a new direction. Deng was, as Mao had always maintained, a man bent on taking the capitalist road. Unlike Mao, he had …

Today, a city of nearly five million people, Shenzhen, sits at the border. The hinterland behind Shenzhen, the Pearl River Delta, is the heart of the fastest growing industrial zone in the world, the Chinese province of Guangdong. This is the landscape that produces two-thirds of the world’s photoc…