This talk by anthropologists Lisa Rofel (UCSC) and Sylvia Yanagisako (Stanford) is from the first part of their forthcoming book, Made in Translation: A Collaborative Ethnography of Italian-Chinese Global Fashion. They analyze the negotiations among Italian managers and Chinese entrepreneurs over the value of their contributions to the Chinese production of Italian fashion and the changing asymmetries in their relationships that shape these negotiations. Critical to the outcome of these dynamic entanglements of transnational capitalism are the cultural processes through which Italians and Chinese actively construct their actions, dispositions, identities and labor power. They show how labor power and value are forged through the encounter between Chinese and Italians rather than brought to it already formed.