As my taxi made its way through the streets of Guangzhou, a city in southern China, the evidence of two decades of unprecedented economic growth flashed by the window. The darkened windows of a Mercedes-Benz sped by on the left; a family of four on a motorbike puttered along on the right; kamikaze taxi drivers veered in and out; a minibus trolled for passengers. My driver, at the wheel of a Chinese-made Volkswagen Jetta, was oblivious to the surrounding chaos, and as he maneuvered for position, I asked him how his car stacked up against the competition. “Better than most Chinese cars,” he replied. “It's made in China, but under the hood it's almost all foreign.” He proceeded to rank the quality of the cars on the road based on their percentage of foreign content: imports at the top, joint venture cars in the middle, pure local at the bottom. Although hardly a charitable assessment – the quality of domestically manufactured cars was improving rapidly – it was nevertheless truthful. It was 1997, my first year of field research for this project, and although China had come a long way from the lumbering two-ton “Liberation” truck in the breakdown lane, it was still a long way from the sleek Mercedes in the passing lane. The gap has been narrowing quickly.