Sao Paulo, Brazil, 12 March – Around 1,700 Brazilians live and work in the Chinese city of Dongguan, in Guangdong province, in the footwear industry, which accounts for half of all the Brazilians living in the People’s Republic of China, according to Brazilian financial newspaper, Valor Económico.
The Brazilians, who began arriving in 1995, almost all from the state of Rio Grande do Sul, work as designers, modellers and leather finishing technicians, amongst other specialized footwear jobs.
The city of Dongguan, now has shops, childcare, restaurants and other services specifically for the city’s Brazilian community.
The Brazilians settled in Dongguan due to the numerous local footwear companies, which represent some 10 percent of world footwear production.
Footwear production in China accounts for 60 percent of world production.
The Brazilian paper reported that “without many prospects in our country due to the stagnation of national footwear production, Brazilian technicians, mainly from Southern Brazil, have gone to China attracted by good salaries. While in Brazil a professional earns between 1,800 and 3,000 reals, in China they can earn up to 6,000 reals.
The emigration of Brazilians form Rio Grande do Sul to China began in 1995, when the Real Plan, which indexed Brazil’s currency to the dollar, caused footwear exports to fall, leading to US import agents to transfer their offices to China and taking the first Brazilian professionals with them.
In Rio Grande do Sul there are two specialist footwear schools that are part of the National Industrial Learning Service (Senai): the leather tanning school at Estancia Velha and the footwear school in Nova Hamburgo.
The footwear factories in Guangdong began, meanwhile, to leave the south of the country for the north as the province is becoming increasingly specialized in the electronic components sector.
The city of Dongguan, located 50 kilometers from Guangzhou and 90 kilometers form Shenzhen, on the border with Hong Kong, has an are of 2,465 square kilometers and a population of 7 million people.
In the last few years 800 foreign companies have set up in Dongguan from the United States (Dupont, Duracell, GE, Pulse, Wal-Mart, Prudential), Japan (Sumitomo, Sanyo, Mitsu, Marubeni, NEC, TDK, Minolta, Kyocera, Kawasaki Steel, Hitachi, Ricoh, Nikon), France (Thomson, Carrefour, Framatome), Switzerland (Nestlé), the United Kingdom ( ICI, Swire), the Netherlands (Philips, Akso and Nobel), South Korea(Samsung) and Finland (Nokia).
In the first half of 2007 two important fairs are to be held in Dongguan.
The China Dongguan Textile and Clothing Industry Fair, held from March 8 to 31 and the China Shoes and Shoetec 2007, from April 18 to 20. (macauhub)
