At a news conference that was broadcast worldwide in March, a US journalist asked Chinese Premier Li Keqiang what he thought would be a comfortable growth rate for China.
In a May Day special report, we profile what impact rising wages and changing demographics are having on the country
It's 8 am in Shenzhen, and outside Foxconn, the better part of the mega-factory's 160,000 employees are coming on or off shift.
Foxconn, other manufacturing giants, and several prominent academics have added their voice to a growing call for more Chinese students to learn practical skills-based vocational training.
When Li Zhiqiang was less than 14 he worked in a tiny noodle restaurant with only a handful of other staff cooking noodles all day. He was paid 50 yuan a month.
The young man guns his motorcycle, weaving manically through heavy traffic on one of Beijing's outer ring roads. He barely slows as he navigates through cars and trucks clogging the lanes.
Lu Erfeng has just handed in his resignation. After almost four years of punching out chips for Apple gadgets on the manufacturing line at Foxconn in Shenzhen, the 21-year-old migrant worker from Henan province says he has had enough.
On a bustling Beijing footpath, sharply dressed young men and women assemble in a formation three ranks deep, standing at attention with backs straight and eyes fixed forward.
Spidermen are indispensable for the 492-meter Shanghai World Financial Center, the tallest building in China.
The elderly women sit on a step by the side of the road and sew by hand. Their weathered faces are maps of smile lines and crow's feet, their hands and chatter lightning quick.
On a factory floor near the edge of Beijing, Xu Libo peers into the coiled and convoluted innards of a partially-built bus, shouting to be heard over a cacophony of tools and machinery.
Pulling his cab over to a taxi rank, Hao Haixu climbs out, stretches his legs and yawns after six hours straight behind the wheel.
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