MEXICO CITY (AP) — Despite his well-paying tech job, Li Daijing didn’t hesitate when his brother asked him for help opening a restaurant in Mexico City. He packed up and left China for the Mexican capital last year, with dreams of a new adventure.
A 30-year-old woman from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, hopes to one day start an online business importing furniture from her home country.
“I want more,” Li said. “I want to be a strong woman. I want freedom.”
Li is one of a new wave of Chinese migrants who are leaving their country in search of opportunity, more freedom or better financial prospects at a time when China’s economy is slowing, youth unemployment remains high and relations with the US and its allies have weakened. .
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of China’s New Migrants package, which The Associated Press looks at the lives of the latest wave of Chinese immigrants living abroad.
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While US border patrols have arrested tens of thousands of Chinese at the US-Mexico border over the past year, thousands have made the Latin American country their final destination. Many hope to start their own businesses, taking advantage of Mexico’s proximity to the US
Last year, the Mexican government issued 5,070 temporary resident visas to Chinese immigrants, twice as many as the previous year – making China third, after the United States and Colombia, as migrant sources granted such permits.
A deep-rooted diaspora that has fostered strong family and business networks over decades makes Mexico attractive to new Chinese arrivals; So are many Chinese multinational companies in Mexico, which set up shop close to their markets in America.
“A lot of Chinese people started coming here two years ago – and these people have to eat,” said Duan Fan, owner of “Nueve y media,” a restaurant in Mexico City’s posh Roma Sur neighborhood that serves spicy Sichuan food. . home province.
“I opened a Chinese restaurant so that people can come here and eat like at home,” he said.
Duan, 27, came to Mexico in 2017 to work with his uncle who owns a wholesale business in Tepito, near the capital’s historic center, and was later joined by his parents.
Unlike previous generations of Chinese who came to northern Mexico from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, the new arrivals are more likely to come from all over China.
Data from the latest 2020 census by Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography show that Chinese immigrants are mainly concentrated in Mexico City. A decade ago, the census recorded the largest concentration of Chinese in the northernmost state of Baja California, on the US-Mexico border across from California.
The arrival of Chinese multinationals has resulted in “people from eastern China, more educated and with a broader global background,” said Andrei Guerrero, academic coordinator of the California-Baja Center for China Studies.
In Mexico City’s middle-class neighborhood, Viaducto-Piedad, near the city’s historic Chinatown, a new Chinese community has grown since the late 1990s. Chinese immigrants not only opened businesses, but created community spaces for religious events and children’s recreation.
Viaducto-Piedad is recognized by the Chinese themselves as Mexico City’s “Chinatown,” said Monica Cinco, a Chinese migration specialist and general director of the EDUCA Mexico Foundation.
“When I ask why, they will tell me because we live here. We have shops for Chinese consumption, beauty shops and restaurants only for Chinese people,” he said. “They live there, there’s a community and some of the public schools in the area have a significant Chinese population.”
In downtown Mexico City, Chinese entrepreneurs have not only opened new grocery stores but have also taken over dozens of buildings. At times, they have been a source of tension with local businesses and residents, who say the expansion of Chinese-owned companies is changing them.
At a mini market in a bustling downtown neighborhood that sells Chinese products such as dried wood ear mushrooms and vacuum-packed spicy duck wings, Dong Shengli, 33, said he moved to Mexico City from Beijing a few months ago to help manage his shop for a few friend.
Dong – who has since found a job with a wholesaler importing knockoff designer sneakers and clothes – said he had worked at the National Energy Commission of China, but was persuaded by friends to come here.
He plans to explore business opportunities in Mexico, but China still holds an attraction for him. “My husband and parents are in China. My mother is old and needs me,” he said.
Others left China in search of greater freedom. This is the case of 50-year-old Tan, who gave only his last name out of concern for the safety of his family, who remain in China. He came to Mexico this year from the southern province of Guangdong and got a job for a few months at Sam’s Club. Back home, he got a variety of jobs, including working in a chemical factory and writing magazine articles during the pandemic.
But he resented what he described as a repressive atmosphere in China.
“It’s not just oppression in the workplace, it’s the mentality,” he said. “I can feel the retreat of politics, the retreat of freedom and democracy. The implications of that really make people feel twisted and sick. So, life is very painful.”
What drew him to Mexico City were the protests that often packed the city’s main streets — proof, he said, that the freedom of expression he wanted existed in this country.
At a restaurant he still serves in the trendy Juárez neighborhood, Li said Mexico is a country of opportunity for him and other Chinese who don’t have relatives in the U.S. to help them settle there. He said he left China in part because of its competitive workplace culture and high housing prices.
“In China, everyone saves money to buy a house, but it’s very expensive to get one,” he said.
Confident with an infectious smile, Li said he is hopeful that his skills working as a sales promoter for Chinese tech giant Tencent Games will help him advance in Mexico.
She says she hasn’t met many Chinese women like her in Mexico City: newcomers, young and single.
Most have married and moved to Mexico to reunite with their husbands.
“To come here is to face the unknown,” he said.
Li doesn’t know when he will be able to carry out his ambitious business plan, but he has an idea: For example, he imagines that in Henan province he can get chairs, tables and other furniture at a good price. Meanwhile, he sells furniture imported to Mexico by a Chinese friend on the e-commerce platform Mercado Libre.
“I’m not married, I don’t have a girlfriend, just myself,” he said, “so I’m going to work hard and struggle.”
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