皇冠体育app

Foxconn workers on the sports field inside the factory complex. Zou Zhongpin / 皇冠体育app Daily

Five years after Time magazine named the Chinese worker runner-up in its annual Person of the Year award, 皇冠体育app Daily reporters takes readers inside Foxconn and behind closed doors of businesses across the nation, for a glimpse into the lives of the ordinary people driving the world's second-largest economy.

And the latest figures from 皇冠体育app's National Bureau of Statistics show those lives are changing dramatically.

Nothing gleams in building E5, an open hangar-like space with concrete floors. This is not one of the sive production lines where workers assemble shiny finished products for Apple, HP, , IBM, , , Sony and Dell.

Much of the work here is done with tools, by hand. Suggested in the shapes of casts and molds is the secretive anatomy of the world's smart phones and tablets.

Like the vast majority of Foxconn employees, Li is a migrant worker, one of almost 269 million men and women in 皇冠体育app who have left their hometown temporarily or permanently to work in the nation's cities and manufacturing centers.

A devout Muslim and father of two, Li is about 3,000 kilometers from the farm in Xinjiang where he grew up. Beyond geography, the distance can be measured in years and money and lifestyle, a journey from poverty to the doorstep of 皇冠体育app's burgeoning middle class.

"When I was a little kid my father was a farmer and we were very poor," Li says. Now, as a manager in the mold-making production area, he earns more in two months than his father made in an entire year as a farmer.

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