Chinese migrants flock to Mexico in search of jobs, a future and, for some, a taste of freedom

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Despite her well-paying tech job, Li Daijing didn't 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 U.S. 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.

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