Gordon Mathews is a professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has written, with Linessa Lin Dan and Yang Yang, "The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace," from which this article is derived.
Globalization is not just dominated by big brands. Low-cost knock-offs of popular items such as mobile phones also cross the globe, often from China to the rest of the world. Although it operates below the radar, this trade powers growth.