Brazil’s first Chinatown could soon be built in the historic center of São Paulo.
The project, a dream of a Chinese community of more than 100,000 people, promises to follow the trend of modern Chinese neighborhoods worldwide, focusing on tourism and commerce, reflecting the projection of China’s economic power in recent decades.
The Chinese neighborhood is not only a creation of the community in search of self-protection – as in New York and San Francisco (US) – but could also be an important soft power weapon of the Asian giant.
According to Thomas Law, president of the Brazil-China Sociocultural Institute (Ibrachina), which is promoting the project with City Hall and relevant agencies, a “Brazilian-style” Chinatown would be integrated into a broader urban development and landscaping project around the municipal market and 25 de Março street, bringing a new tourist attraction closer to the capital city of São Paulo’s popular shopping district.
“If you take international models, [you see this integration]. In London, Chinatown is very close to Trafalgar Square, where the historical monuments are.”
“In Porto, the new Bulhão Market is near Santa Catarina street, where the city’s thriving commerce is.”
“São Paulo is no different and could be even bigger than these centers,” Law explained in an interview with Globo.
Despite the dream, the approval, and the projects, there are still no deadlines for realizing the neighborhood nor exact amounts to be invested.
Law hopes to take Chinatown off the drawing board next year when the 50th anniversary of re-establishing relations between the two countries will be celebrated.
But there is bureaucracy to cut through and ambiguities about funding lines to resolve.
On a recent trip to China with a business delegation invited by the federal government that preceded President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s trip to Beijing and Shanghai, Law said he had closed cooperation with Chinese cities for the project and also presented it to companies – which he said have been interested in “studying” the proposal.
“A Chinatown in São Paulo will certainly strengthen cultural and commercial ties between Brazil and China, which are already important economic partners,” Law stressed.
According to Leonardo Trevisan, professor of international relations at São Paulo’s Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing (ESPM), the first Chinatowns in the West emerged as a form of organization and protection for Chinese immigrants, who were often subjected to working conditions that today would be considered similar to slavery.
These working conditions and discrimination led to an attitude among the Chinese that differed from that of other immigrants, namely, little direct integration into society.
They closed in on themselves, in a position of self-protection, mainly for the pursuit of trade. However, with China’s economic growth beginning in the 1990s, the new Chinatowns took on a new geopolitical significance, the professor said.
Although often created in cooperation with civil society and local governments, the transformation of Chinatowns from areas of restaurants, teahouses, and family-run businesses made room for increasingly technological and diversified products and played a diplomatic role for Beijing.
The formation of this new Chinatown model is a typical soft power presence.
If you read the concept, it is just that: an absolutely palatable economic and cultural presence, an unconstrained influence.
To put it in the language of marketers, it leads to building a brand for China, with all the power and presence of a country with the second-largest GDP in the world.
Unlike the best-known Chinese neighborhoods in the West, such as those in San Francisco and New York, which emerged in the 19th century, the newer Chinatowns have a new profile being promoted by local governments as an opportunity to attract tourism and businesses.
In Madrid, the city government recently installed Chinese archways and a panda statue in the Usera neighborhood in the south, where most of the country’s Chinese community is concentrated.
The initiative was presented as a first step toward officially recognizing the neighborhood as Spain’s Chinatown and integrating into the tourist circuit.
The official websites of the capital already present the neighborhood as such.
In Bogotá, Colombia, talks to create a Colombian Chinatown in 2019 have gained momentum with a proposal similar to that in São Paulo to integrate the attraction into a popular commerce region.
Although the project presented by Law and Ibrachina includes the construction of a cultural institute, gymnasiums, and recreational and wellness areas – the original idea envisioned only a boulevard on Rua Carlos de Souza Nazaré but is currently being revised and will be presented in July as part of a competition for projects in the city center – the commercial aspect is closely linked to the “Chinese Quarter.”
It would be the largest in the region, surpassing the “Barrio Chino” in Buenos Aires (Argentina).
News Brazil, English news Brazil, Chinatown in São Paulo
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