About This Site

China Makerspaces is a reference site about shared fabrication spaces: makerspaces, fab labs, hackerspaces, and the tools and institutions around them. It exists because the terminology is muddled, the budgeting questions are asked constantly, and the history — especially China's enormous mid-2010s makerspace expansion — is worth understanding on its own terms.

The site is written for a general United States audience: educators and librarians scoping a space, community organizers writing a proposal, and curious people who want to know what a fab lab actually is. Where the subject touches China, we rely on scholarly work rather than press-release lore, principally the Princeton University Press ethnography Prototype Nation.

A note on what this site is not: these pages are reviewed reference material, not professional advice. Our cost estimator produces rough planning figures, not quotes. Our page on safety training describes how institutions structure their programs; it is not itself safety training. Before you operate equipment, take the hands-on training your local space or institution requires, and before you sign a lease or a purchase order, talk to the professionals — accountants, insurers, and your local building department — who can look at your actual situation.