Endless hours of toil, absurdly low wages, lives wasted in sweatshops, occupational illnesses and injuries of the kind not seen in the West for decades – yes, it’s the Chinese economic juggernaut in full throttle, belching out poison gases, generating profits for the nation’s business elite, and making China’s working poor, sicker. In The China Price – the China Price being the lowest possible price, and the three words that US industry fears most – former Financial Times journalist Alexandra Harney looks at what really lies behind the ubiquitous Made In China label.

This chilling and meticulously reported book lays bare the conditions that underpin the world’s factory, with compelling factual data, and it would take the most stone-hearted reader to read this tome without a furrowed brow. But the blood, sweat and tears of the exploited Chinese factory worker can also be found on other hands, far from this part of the world.

The Putonghua-speaking Harney illuminates the means by which the system is fueled by North American and EU investment, rapacious global consumerism, and double standards. Retailers impose social responsibility codes on their Chinese suppliers, but decline to pay the costs of raising labour standards.

The result? Cheating on a biblical scale, through the falsification of employment records, and a thriving network of secret unregulated factories that are out of sight/out of mind as far as the Toys’RUs consumer is concerned.But, thanks to a growing legion of courageous trade unionists, and a regional labour shortage, China’s manufacturing-sector proletariat is gaining the work-place rights that are taken for granted in much of the rest of the world. Meanwhile, Harney has delivered the most important book on the mainland economy of the year.

Nick Walker