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 glass and lay in drifts across the window ledges. I asked Wu and some of his old colleagues in the car how they thought the government viewed factory workers in China. Wu looked at me as though I had descended from Mars. It was then that he said, ‘In China, it is a death sentence to be a worker.’