麻豆约拍

Migration of impoverished rural peasants has been the driving force behind the China's economic transformation over the last few decades. The 麻豆约拍's Justin Rowlatt ventures deep into the countryside to find communities where life would be recognisable to those from the time of the emperors.

Kam Wing Chan, a Professor of Geography at University of Washington, explains how Chinese labour is going to start becoming increasingly scarce, which is going to have profound effects not just in China, but on the world.

And Oxford University classicist Armand D'Angour describes the powerful attraction of civilisation's earliest cities.

(Image: Chinese workers in a textile factory. Credit STR/AFP/Getty Images)