Paradox for Philippines as Chinese Set Up Shop – Roel Landingin

Part 5 of Financial Times’ Asia immigration series once again reports on the wave of Chinese migrants adjusting to other societies and vice versa. In the Philippines, newcomers are not welcomed by established Chinese immigrants.

She hardly speaks any English or Tagalog but that does not stop the white-haired grandmother from China’s southern Fujian province from running her clothes store in Divisoria, Manila’s bargain shopping centre. She has three Filipina assistants and she haggles with customers via a calculator.

Like many of the shop- owners in the “168″ mall – which, in Cantonese, sounds like “prosperity all the way” – the grandmother is a recent arrival from China and part of a new wave of immigrants who have arrived in the Philippines. [Full Text]