The Machine is Your Lord and Master

Foxconn is the world's largest electronics manufacturer. Its factory cities employ over a million Chinese and produce iPhones, Kindles, and PlayStations. They have been the scene of worker suicides, which exposed forms of exploitative labor conditions based on a militarized organization of production and despotic surveillance, even in the dormitories.

This book builds on the work of sociologist Jenny Chan to offer a poignant analysis of the Foxconn system. The research is enriched by first-hand testimony from a student and manufacturing worker in Chongqing, named Yang, as well as the experience of a young Chinese migrant worker in Shenzen, Xu Lizhi, who committed suicide in 2014, leaving behind poems about assembly-line work in "The workshop, where my youth was cut short."