In the post-2020 era, South America has become a key arena for Chinese global enterprise, with Chinese goods and services achieving unprecedented popularity. This presentation argues that the groundwork for this contemporary success was not only laid by recent state-led initiatives, but also by a much earlier, understudied phenomenon: the rise of the first-generation Overseas Chinese business community between 1960 and 2000. Arriving in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela with minimal state support and confronting a legacy of anti-Chinese sentiment, these entrepreneurs nevertheless achieved remarkable upward mobility. This talk will examine how they succeeded, exploring their business models, and the crucial role of community-based support systems and kinship networks in navigating challenging social and economic landscapes. I contend that their accomplishments did more than secure personal prosperity; they initiated a fundamental shift in the local perception of the Chinese, transforming a historically marginalized group into a respected economic community and laying the relational foundation upon which the PRC’s later influence would be built.
Jian Ren is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and Hoover History Lab, with a PhD in history from Rutgers University. Ren is a historian of diplomacy, business, and migration in China-Latin America relations. He is working on his book manuscript “Dancing on the Periphery: China, Latin America, and the Cold War”.
This webinar series features the newest research on the history of Chinese business and entrepreneurship. If you have any questions about this webinar series, would like to give a talk, or would like to be removed from this mailing list, please contact Professor John D. Wong (jdwong@hku.hk) or Professor Ghassan Moazzin (gmoazzin@hku.hk).