Chapter 4
When AI Farms Pigs: Optimizing Animal and Human Life
In November 2018, while African swine fever (ASF) looms as a distant threat in Guangzhou, I observe traditional pork preservation happening on apartment balconies. Slabs of lap yuk (preserved pork) hang alongside laundry, curing in the autumn air through a process unique to southern China that relies on native bacteria and spores.
ASF, which causes hemorrhaging with nearly 100% fatality in pigs, has reached China-the world's largest pork producer-for the first time, threatening economic stability and food security. Pork's cultural significance in China cannot be overstated: domesticated since 7000 BCE, it comprises 70% of animal calorie intake and holds medicinal importance in traditional Chinese medicine.
In rural Xiangyang village, pigs have become conspicuously absent. Government authorities have preventatively slaughtered pigs from small-scale family operations, believing industrial farms better maintain biosecurity measures. According to Li Jianhu, the government uses ASF as a convenient excuse to eliminate small farms in favor of industrial operations. Two-thirds of production now comes from large corporations determined to create "China's pork miracle" through cost-cutting and technology.
NetEase, one of the world's largest internet gaming companies, has unexpectedly entered the pork business. After founder Ding Lei worried about fake blood tofu while eating hot pot, he pivoted to creating Weiyang, NetEase's agricultural division. Since 2009, they've operated a pig farm in Lushan with factory-like precision, where pigs live an "optimized life" with carefully calculated exercise, specialized feed, and even soothing music to prevent stress that could affect meat quality.
Industrial pig farming has standardized porcine life through computational genetics and automation. Where hundreds of locally-adapted breeds once existed, now only a few like the DLY hybrid dominate, with even unwanted traits like tails being genetically edited out. This optimization assumes complete control over all variables, yet African swine fever exposes this as delusion.
Alibaba proposes to replace human farmers with its ET Agricultural Brain-an AI system designed to help create China's pork miracle. At Alibaba Cloud's campus in "Cloud Town" outside Hangzhou, I visit the Cloud Computing Museum showcasing their technical achievements. Like Amazon Web Services, Alibaba Cloud emerged from an e-commerce company that monetized its excess computing capacity during shopping lulls.
The optimization of human life parallels the optimization of pig farming through AI. While ET Agricultural Brain monitors millions of pigs through identity marks, sensors, and cameras to detect disease and make data-driven decisions, the same logic extends to human optimization. The economic logic is clear: AI makes sense only at industrial scale-millions of pigs, not just a few. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle where demand for cheap pork drives industrialized farming, which increases disease transmission, which necessitates AI solutions, which further reduces costs and increases demand.
The controlled world promised by tech companies presents optimization and automation as inevitable, but as African swine fever and other pathogens demonstrate, we live in an unpredictable open system. The response is to tighten control over variables, creating an increasingly claustrophobic system-a self-fulfilling prophecy of a static, closed AI world born from an inability to honor the unknown.
Chapter 5
Rural Drone Operators: New Opportunities in the Countryside
I meet Sun Wei, a 25-year-old licensed drone operator who founded his own farm service company, at the XAG Drone Users Conference in Guangzhou. Despite only having a vocational education, Wei transformed his childhood interest in model planes into a thriving career, rejecting the traditional path of inheriting his father's stable government railroad job.
Wei represents a new "Chinese Dream"-rural youth finding opportunities through technology rather than migration. His farm service team uses drones for precision pesticide spraying across China, traveling over 30,000 kilometers yearly. Unlike gig economy workers in America, Wei genuinely loves his work with XAG, contributes to product development, and mentors others.
The conference is filled with sunburnt drone operators speaking rural dialects. While initially skeptical, farmers now find drones fashionable and cost-effective due to precision application of pesticides. With only 5% of Chinese farming using precision agriculture in 2018 and 98% of farms being small plots under two hectares, the market potential remains enormous, though eventual saturation of drone operators seems inevitable.
The drone conference reveals China's social stratification: wealthy investors and thought leaders sit at the front, while farm service owners and drone operators like Sun Wei crowd the back. When XAG's CTO unveils new drone features, the operators erupt with enthusiasm for practical improvements like refillable pesticide tanks and modular components. However, they fall silent at the announcement of simplified navigation systems that might allow farmers to operate drones themselves. The CTO assures them this means advancement opportunities in data management and strategy, suggesting technology's promise of upward mobility.
The Chinese government's push to bridge rural-urban education gaps stems from political stability concerns. Young rural migrants in cities feel unwelcome and alienated, creating a potentially volatile population. The government's "Rural Revitalization" strategy aims to attract youth back to their hometowns under community oversight. At the XAG conference, the contrast between worlds is stark-venture capitalists picking at rice while discussing business yields, while drone operators enthusiastically pile plates with seafood, exclaiming, "See? People live the good life here in Guangzhou! Now we get to experience it!"
Chapter 6
"Made in China": Redefining Innovation and Production
The phrase "Made in China" has been deeply embedded in my psyche since childhood, when I helped my aunt sell trinkets at a Boston street stall. Despite my childish enthusiasm, I overheard customers dismissing our wares as "cheap, made in China." This experience transformed those three words into a symbol of shame, suggesting shoddy craftsmanship by mindless factory workers. Yet for millions across rural China, "Made in China" changed lives, allowing young women to escape patriarchal traditions and reshaping the country's social fabric.
At Tianjin Museum, an exhibit documents China's humiliation during Western occupation, displaying crude Chinese weapons alongside sophisticated British rifles. This technological disparity relates to historian Joseph Needham's question: "Why did China never develop modern science?" despite early achievements. Online searches about Chinese innovation typically yield articles questioning China's capacity to innovate, blaming cultural factors like ancient Taoism's emphasis on maintaining balance rather than seeking progress.
Meeting with analysts reveals tensions in perceptions of Chinese innovation. One VC friend notes Silicon Valley's hubris contrasts with China's increasing tolerance for risk and failure-traditionally avoided in Chinese culture. Yet questions remain about who can afford to fail: VCs can absorb losses while retirees investing in P2P lending scandals cannot. The privilege of failure differs vastly between venture capitalists and rural students for whom failure means continued poverty.
During monsoon rains in Guangzhou, my aunt expresses personal frustration about the Trump trade war. She argues it's actually beneficial for China, claiming Chinese manufacturers previously exported quality goods to America while keeping defective items for domestic markets, damaging their environment for American profit. She believes American corporations demanded impossibly low costs that forced corner-cutting, then sold products at enormous markups.
Naomi Wu, a self-proclaimed cyborg from Shenzhen, challenges stereotypes about Asian women in technology. While Asian women in the US tech industry are often excluded from leadership roles and portrayed as the "model minority"-soft-spoken and obedient-Naomi is bold and innovative. She sees her body as a hardware enclosure, modifying it to succeed in a world where algorithms favor "attractive women." The irony isn't lost that while her former classmates solder in factories as "mindless drones," she's celebrated as a forward-thinking "maker."
In Yangguang village, Rice Harmony Cooperative demonstrates how shanzhai principles can transform agriculture through community-based innovation. Their custom-built "Frankenstein machines"-modified agricultural equipment created with local blacksmiths-exemplify this approach. Unlike tech-driven innovation focused on scale and user growth, Rice Harmony prioritizes people in decision-making while maintaining open processes. This represents innovation that regenerates across time rather than scaling across millions of users, requiring no venture capital or engineering teams.
Chapter 7
Surveillance and Control: Technology's Darker Side
In Guiyang's police station, Officer Xiaoli explains the challenges of their "Real Population Platform" surveillance system. The database struggles with data compatibility issues, allowing people to have multiple addresses-a necessity for tracking the floating migrant population. The platform's effectiveness depends on human "police assistants" who physically visit apartments and rely on landlord cooperation, though many migrants work night shifts, making them hard to track. Despite technological ambitions, Xiaoli remains realistic about the system's limitations, especially regarding predictive policing: "If we could actually prevent crime, that would mean I found a way to predict the future."
The Megvii (Face++) office in Beijing mirrors Silicon Valley startups with its casual atmosphere, beverage fridges, and expensive engineers. Building surveillance software requires significant investment from VCs who fund lengthy R&D phases. Engineers work on small pieces of larger systems, often disconnected from the broader implications of their work. Megvii's showroom displays their facial recognition technology, including algorithms that power China's unironically named "Skynet" surveillance system and the "Sharp Eyes" program targeting rural areas.
A Meituan delivery driver performs an impressive leap over hallway furniture to deliver medicine within his two-minute window. Meituan exemplifies "China speed"-the frenetic pace of modern Chinese commerce enabled by complex logistics, cheap labor, and affordable mobile phones. Unlike American gig workers, drivers receive a base salary of RMB 2,000 ($280) monthly plus RMB 4 per delivery, but face numerous fines: RMB 5 for late deliveries, RMB 20 for bad reviews, RMB 100 for refusing orders, and RMB 500 for early deliveries. This gamified system with bonuses and fines mirrors American gig work, with platforms offloading risk to workers while shirking customer responsibility.
In 2012, I traveled with a Mongolian friend to Baotou in Inner Mongolia, a rare earth processing town with 70% of the world's known deposits. The journey revealed both environmental devastation from mining and my friend's complex identity as an ethnic Mongolian in China. During our trip, he disclosed his prison past from a teenage bank scheme, driven by desperation to escape his limited future.
I reflect on surveillance as a tool that creates criminality, drawing lines between "right" and "wrong" sides of society based on arbitrary categories like class, race, and ethnicity. While many accept corporate surveillance with "nothing to hide" attitudes, we must challenge both corporate data tracking and the normalized police surveillance state. Data fails to capture human complexity and growth; my friend's criminal record remains static while he evolves into a father, husband, and artist.
Chapter 8
E-Commerce Transforms Rural China: From Isolation to Global Markets
The ancient village of Shangdiping, isolated for a thousand years with only a five-kilometer mountain path connecting it to the nearest town, entered a new era in 2017 when a cement road wide enough for cars was completed. This development marked the village's transition from subsistence farming to participation in the market economy and e-commerce.
Shangdiping represents the government's efforts to lift villages out of poverty through rural revitalization. Historically, families survived on subsistence farming, with younger generations temporarily leaving for city work before returning. The government's economic experiments use technology, e-commerce, and infrastructure to create rural entrepreneurship, changing both economic systems and traditional culture in a complex landscape of corporate interests and government oversight.
Shangdiping's e-commerce efforts are struggling despite new infrastructure. When urbanites ordered eggs, delivery took twelve days-impractical for perishables. Fresh vegetables face similar challenges, with urban consumers rejecting imperfect organic produce. The village is now pursuing "cultural tourism" that capitalizes on their ethnic minority status, with plans for elaborate Dong-style bridges, guesthouses, and improved infrastructure.
Thousands of kilometers north in Shandong Province, Dinglou village represents successful e-commerce implementation. The village bustles with wealth-elaborate markets selling everything from sesame oil to cakes embedded with cash, and fiber-optic internet supposedly faster than Shanghai's. At the Rural Internet Center, an exhibition explains how Alibaba launched Rural Taobao in 2013, establishing service centers where local ambassadors help villagers shop online and access digital services.
Ren Qingsheng, Dinglou's e-commerce pioneer and now village party secretary, types with two calloused fingers. Though a millionaire, he still works the fields as part of the village environmental commission. His e-commerce journey began in 2009 when his wife, a former manual laborer with vocational education, suggested selling costumes online. They borrowed 1,400 yuan for a computer, and Ren had to learn pinyin using his daughter's textbook just to list items. Their first order led to a celebratory chicken dinner, and by 2017 their business was earning $1.16 million annually, shipping worldwide.
Dinglou exists in fascinating contradictions. Halloween, which drives much of their costume business, isn't celebrated in China outside urban pockets. "Nature" as urbanites conceive it doesn't exist here-every centimeter of land is cultivated, even burial plots are tucked between vegetable fields. The Taobao economy has intensified environmental pressures, transforming rich soil into factory-like dirt for cash crops.
E-commerce has created thousands of Taobao villages like Dinglou, manufacturing everything from toys to computer parts. These small manufacturers supply not just Chinese markets but global platforms like Amazon, Wish.com, and trendy Instagram brands. This fragmented manufacturing landscape represents "New Retail"-hundreds of small companies catering to niche markets rather than monolithic corporations. But for sellers, platforms like Taobao extract increasing costs through advertising requirements and livestreaming demands. One disgruntled shoe manufacturer complains, "Alibaba sucks us dry... sucks the blood out of this village," describing a system where quality continuously degrades to maintain competitive pricing.
Chapter 9
Seeking Community in a Digital Age: Livestreaming and Pearl Parties
The author visits China's pearl farming industry in Zhuji, Zhejiang Province, which produces 70% of the world's freshwater pearls. They meet Zhao, an energetic entrepreneur in his late twenties who runs an agile pearl company with his wife and friends. Unlike traditional pearl businesses, Zhao's operation emphasizes quality over quantity, employing lean production methods inspired by Japanese management techniques.
Zhuji's pearl market resembles Shenzhen's electronics bazaar-a chaotic, fluorescent-lit maze of stalls where global buyers haggle over pearls sold by weight, piece, and type. Fakery abounds: some sellers use plastic-seeded pearls with thin lacquer layers instead of proper tissue nucleation; others alter pearl colors or misrepresent measurements. The market offers incredible variety-baroque, akoya, Edison, sea pearls-including the "wish pearls" that initially drew the author here, vacuum-sealed dead oysters shipped to American consumers.
These "pearl parties" on Facebook Live represent modern Tupperware-style sales events where hostesses like Kristie from Georgia sell wish pearl oysters shipped from Shanxiahu. For about $20, viewers reserve an oyster that the hostess opens live, revealing the pearl inside which is later set in jewelry. These parties represent the booming multilevel marketing (MLM) industry thriving on social media.
Pearl party hostesses build "direct downlines" of sellers beneath them, creating hierarchical sales networks. Most are women seeking flexible work-stay-at-home moms, nurses with health issues, army veterans-predominantly from states with high unemployment. The appeal isn't the low-quality pearls but the community and attention: hostesses make each customer feel special in an era of disconnection.
On the mobile screen, a pale woman with colored contacts gyrates in hot pants. She's a KOL (key opinion leader)-the type of influencer Zhao wants wearing their pearls. KOLs and wanghong (online celebrities) dominate China's video apps, with urban KOLs representing luxury lifestyles while rural influencers offer a counterculture to urban civility. Livestreamers sell products directly to viewers, with platforms like Kuaishou featuring people hawking everything from oranges to perfume. The industry is heavily gendered, with women making up 70% of performers, many undergoing plastic surgeries to achieve the desired "snake-shaped face."
Peppa Pig lives a double life in China-children's cartoon character by day, subversive meme by night. Online, she's become a symbol for disenfranchised youth called "shehui ren" (society people) who reject mainstream values. These young people see through the prescribed life path of good grades, good job, shopping, and reproduction. They've embraced a nihilistic rejection of a system they believe is rigged against them. For many, hustling between jobs "in the cracks" of respectable society (hun shehui) offers the only path forward, with some holding onto hope that enough hustle might let them "become boss of their own life."
The author reflects on their own life-commuting to a generic office with standing desks and Aeron chairs, making "rich men richer," finding community in work relationships but wondering if this is the family they would choose. Despite technological connection, loneliness persists. Rather than engaging in visioning exercises that promise manifestation of dreams, the author embraces the present moment which "promises nothing-it only demands." It demands building communities that allow "interbeing" to thrive, focusing on awareness and care rather than efficiency and scale, and making meaning rather than waiting or wanting.
