An all too familiar predicament[1], except I grew up accustomed to also seeing Filipinos (services) and Bangladeshi (construction) in similar melting pots.<p>> <i>Locals suspected that Chinese mobsters were disposing of corpses in exchange for passports, which they then sold to new arrivals, a scheme that took advantage of the native population’s apparent inability to tell any one Chinese person from another. There was a note of jealousy to the Pratans’ complaints, as well as a reluctant respect for people who had beaten them at their own game.</i><p>Morbid humor aside, this game and it's variants are apparently quite common[2].<p>[1] <a href="https://mobile.nytimes.com/1993/07/18/world/made-usa-hard-labor-pacific-island-special-report-saipan-sweatshops-are-no.html" rel="nofollow">https://mobile.nytimes.com/1993/07/18/world/made-usa-hard-la...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/business/saipan-casino-illegal-chinese-workers-trump.html" rel="nofollow">https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/business/saipan-casino...</a>
Chinese owned a big chunk of Italian textile industry for quite a while. For at least 12~14 years, a big portion of made in Italy stuff were Chinese made.<p>Owning a factory in Italy can be quite cheaper than to do so in China, to a lot of people's surprise. An added benefit to it is that you can claim "Italian quality"<p>For more on topic stuff, if you are a Vancouverite, you can visit an Italian cafe by Gastown Starbucks that is ran by a lady from Wenzhou who speaks decent Italian.
Neither surprising, nor new.<p>This has been going on for years in a number of countries (Spain, Italy, etc...) just so the goods can be marked "Made in *". The TV image of the careful old craftsman hand-sweing your luggage is a falsehood. It's sweatshops all over again.<p>It's even happening in the United States. Louis Vuitton does its repairs with immigrant labor in southern California so it can say the work was done in America. (The whole thing is tremendously complicated because of California laws about handbags and leather goods, but that's off topic.)<p>There are compounds in some states that are essentially isolated towns surrounding a factory where Chinese laborers put things together so they can be marked "Made in USA." The laborers eat, sleep, work, and live without ever going outside the compound. It's like the horror stories we see about China, but on U.S. soil.
As I read this, the New Yorker seemed to highlight the problems from a more leftist, social safety net perspective. The Chinese immigrants circumvented the tax code in every way they could - working under the table, starting unregistered businesses in garages and vans, living in the garages and vans, even dying secretly so their passports could be repurposed for new immigrants. This meant hospitals and other public services went underfunded.<p>What I found interesting, though, were the competing right-wing narratives in the lives of the immigrants. They were so ready to live industrious, entrepreneurial lives (largely) outside of the protection of government, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, while their work ethic, frugality, and ultimate success led to anti-immigrant, nativist sentiments and the politics that reflect them.<p>I tend to be relatively laissez-faire in my tastes for both economic and immigration policy, but watching the right-wing in Europe and the United States reject the latter makes me think the sentiment comes from a deeper, visceral level. Almost like an immune system rejecting something it doesn't recognize. For all the posturing and intellectual maturity of free-market economics and small government policies, it seems that right-wing politics will always find easier alliances among those with xenophobic or even racist sentiments because those motivations are hardwired into our DNA, and embracing your hard wiring is a lot easier than comprehending Friedman or Hayek.
When I was in Amsterdam I chatted with a guy. His job is to fly to Amsterdam and Milan, go to all the bespoke stores, buy up all their goods, and then take them to a shop which clones them for production-scale. I'd have thought the designers would be working with the producers at scale, but that's not how it works.
Apparently if you are Chinese then you are a "worker" who "assembles" Gucci handbags but if you are Italian you are a "craftsman" who "makes" them.