Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

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Hello and welcome to this Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me Rebecca

Kebbe.

Over the past 40 years China has witnessed massive economic growth. It's become known as the world's factory.

The driving force behind much of it has been a vast migrant workforce of millions of

people, many from the countryside, but at what cost of village life and rural communities.

I've been speaking to writer Liang Hong about her experience of leaving the Chinese countryside

and what's happened to it since.

Shanghai is one of the world's fastest growing cities and these are the people

building the skyscrapers and assembling the goods to be shipped from its port.

I'm from Wiennan. I have come to work at a timber yard.

I'm from Hanselh, I'm from Hanjia Paris.

I came from Anhui to look for work driving a truck.

The shift in China's economic development has been so enormous and so rapid

that it's often described as an economic miracle.

After years of financial stagnation and poverty,

the Communist One Party state began to open up and reform in the late 1970s.

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