Like many of her peers, Li Qinglin depends on Foxconn for a living. For a 23-year-old woman from the countryside, working for the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer – which employs more than 1m people, mostly around her age – comes close to a default career choice.
But Ms Li has decided her place is in a booth just outside the factory gates in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou. Instead of working on the Taiwanese company’s production lines, she tries to recruit others to do so. “I am not going in there,” she says, explaining that running a one-woman employment agency is much better than assembling an iPhone 5. “I’m now at an age where I’m most energetic and can achieve most. I want to use this time to do business.”
Ms Li is not alone. Her willingness to think about life beyond the factory is emblematic of her generation, which is less enthusiastic than their parents about manufacturing work.