customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

sponsorType

authorLocations

authors

paywallTypes

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

factSheets

series

knowledgeQuestion

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

copyrighted

customTimezone

liveContents

Associated Press

Despite her well-paying tech job, Li Daijing did not hesitate when her cousin asked for help running a restaurant in Mexico City. She packed up and left China for the Mexican capital last year, with dreams of a new adventure.
The 30-year-old woman from Chengdu, the Sichuan provincial capital, hopes one day to start an online business importing furniture from her home country.
“I want more,” Li said. “I want to be a strong woman. I want independence.”
Li is among a new wave of Chinese migrants who are leaving their country in search of opportunities, more freedom, or better financial prospects at a time when China’s economy has slowed, youth unemployment rates remain high, and its relations with the US and its allies have soured.
While the US border patrol arrested tens of thousands of Chinese at the US-Mexico border over the past year, thousands are making the Latin American country their final destination. Many have hopes to start businesses of their own, taking advantage of Mexico’s proximity to the US.
Last year, Mexico’s government issued 5,070 temporary residency visas to Chinese immigrants, twice as many as the previous year – making China third, behind the United States and Colombia, as the source of migrants granted the permits.
A deep-rooted diaspora that has fostered strong family and business networks over decades makes Mexico appealing for new Chinese arrivals; so does a growing presence of Chinese multinationals in Mexico, which have set up shop to be close to markets in the Americas.

“A lot of Chinese started coming here two years ago – and these people need to eat,” said Duan Fan, owner of “Nueve y media,” a restaurant in Mexico City’s stylish Roma Sur neighbourhood that serves the spicy food of Sichuan, his home province.
“I opened a Chinese restaurant so that people can come here and eat like they do at home,” he said.
Duan, 27, arrived in Mexico in 2017 to work with an uncle who owns a wholesale business in Tepito, near the capital’s historic centre, and was later joined by his parents.
Unlike earlier 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 is leading an influx of “people from eastern China, more educated and with a broader global background,” said Andrei Guerrero, academic coordinator of the Center for China-Baja California Studies.
In a middle-class Mexico City neighbourhood, Viaducto-Piedad, near the city’s historic Chinatown, a new Chinese community has been growing since the late 1990s. Chinese immigrants have not only opened businesses, but have created community spaces for religious events and children’s recreation.

Viaducto-Piedad is recognised by the Chinese themselves as Mexico City’s true “Chinatown,” said Monica Cinco, a specialist in Chinese migration and general director of the EDUCA Mexico Foundation.
“When I asked them why, they would tell me because we live here. We have stores for Chinese consumption, beauty shops and restaurants just for Chinese,” she said. “They live there, there is a community and several public schools in the area have a significant Chinese population.”
In downtown Mexico City, Chinese entrepreneurs have not only opened new wholesale stores but have also taken over dozens of buildings. At times, they have become a source of tension with local businesses and residents, who say the expansion of Chinese-owned enterprises is displacing them.
At a mini-market in a bustling downtown neighbourhood selling Chinese products such as dried wood ear mushrooms and vacuum-packed spicy duck wings, 33-year-old Dong Shengli said he moved to Mexico City from Beijing a few months ago to help manage the shop for some friends.
Dong – who has since found a job with a wholesaler importing knock-off designer trainers and clothing – said he had worked at China’s National Energy Commission, but was persuaded by his friends to come here.
He plans to explore business possibilities in Mexico, but China still has a pull for him. “My wife and my parents are in China. My mother is elderly, she needs me,” he said.
Others are leaving China in search of greater freedoms. That is the case for 50-year-old Tan, who gave only his surname out of concern for the safety of his family, who remain in China. He arrived in Mexico this year from the southern province of Guangdong and got a job for a few months at a Sam’s Club. Back home, he made a living doing various jobs, including at a chemical plant and writing magazine articles during the pandemic.

But he chafed under what he described as a repressive atmosphere in China.
“It’s not just the oppression in the workplace, it’s the mentality,” he said. “I can feel the political regression, the retreat of freedom and democracy. The implications of that truly make people feel twisted and sick. So, life is very painful.”
What caught his attention in Mexico City were the protests that often pack the city’s main avenues – proof, he said, that the freedom of expression he longs for exists in this country.
At the restaurant where she still helps out in the trendy Juárez neighbourhood, Li said Mexico stands out as a land of opportunity for her and other Chinese who do not have relatives in the US to help them settle there. She said she left China partly because of the competitive workplace culture and high home prices.
“In China, everyone saves money to buy a house, but it’s really expensive to get one,” she said.
Self-confident with a contagious smile, Li said she is hopeful her skills working as a sales promoter for Chinese tech giant Tencent Games will help her get ahead in Mexico.
She says she has not met many Chinese women like herself in Mexico City: newcomers, young and single.
Most are married and are moving to Mexico to reunite with their husbands.
“To come here is to face something unknown,” she said.
Li does not know when she’ll be able to carry out her ambitious business plans, but she has ideas: For example, she imagines that in Henan province she could get chairs, tables and other furniture at a good price. Meanwhile, she is selling furniture imported to Mexico by a Chinese friend on the e-commerce platform Mercado Libre.
“I’m not married, I don’t have a boyfriend, it’s just myself,” she said, “so I’ll work hard and struggle.”


California couple Michael Liu and Phoebe Dong convicted in Chinese birth tourism scheme

Ex-CIA officer who spied for China gets 10 years in jail and a lifetime of polygraph tests

Malaysia sees spike in Chinese interest in long-term visas after requirements simplified

In China’s education exports to Malaysia, trust and sensitivity are key

Chinese overseas

Chinese migrants flock to Mexico in search of freedom and opportunity

An arch donated by the Chinese government adorns the Degollado Plaza in Mexico City. Photo: AP

Owner Duan Fan poses in his Chinese restaurant “Nueve y media,” in the Roma Sur neighbourhood of Mexico City, July 5, 2024. Photo: AP

Migrants board a plane for deportation at an airbase in Panama City, Panama, on Friday. Panama has imposed border closures through the Darién Gap and launched a partnership with the US government to repatriate migrants, including Chinese, who often fly into Colombia to make the journey through a perilous jungle of the in the hopes of reaching the US. Photo: Bloomberg

Chinese products are seen in a supermarket in downtown Mexico City, July 24, 2024. Photo: AP

US 2024 election: Chinese-Americans launch group backing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz

US Vice-President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, boards Air Force Two at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Thursday. Photo: AFP

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, pictured speaking at the White House in Washington in May, is among a group of Chinese-Americans supporting the 2024 presidential bid of US Vice-President Kamala Harris. Photo: Reuters

Chinese-Americans comprise the second-largest Asian-American group in the electoral swing states of Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, according to a report by AAPI Data and APIAVote. Photo: AFP

Is China rising or slowing down? The answer is it’s complicated

Illustration: Craig Stephens

An employee works in a solar panel factory in Hefei, Anhui province, on May 16. Photo: China Daily/Reuters

Former top aide to New York Governor Hochul is charged with acting as Chinese agent

Linda Sun, a former deputy chief of staff to New York Governor Kathy Hochul, was arrested on Tuesday. Photo: X/LindaSun84

New York Governor Kathy Hochul speaks during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. Photo: AP

Panama unveils deportation flights to China, India and Ecuador to stem US-bound migration

A member of Panama’s Tactical Aeronaval Operations group watches as migrants are deported to Colombia from Panama City on Tuesday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Chinese retailers, once sweet on Mexico, say locals are turning sour. What changed?

Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen

News

World

Americas

Thousands of Chinese immigrants now call Mexico home, from those seeking business opportunities to freedom of expression


Thousands of Chinese immigrants now call Mexico home, from those seeking business opportunities to freedom of expression.


Mexico

US immigration