Why Do the Chinese Own So Many Corner Stores in Argentina? And Why Are They Getting Shot?

Chinos, Chinese foreign-owned enterprises, Triad murders, and what I've learned about them so far.

(Disclaimer, I did a decent amount of research for this article but a good deal of it is based on hearsay. There has been little English-language reporting on this topic.)

On April 4th 2022 at 6:30 PM, a taxi pulls up in front of a nondescript Chinese grocer on a side street in the city of Buenos Aires. It’s a small storefront taking up the ground floor of an apartment complex — a setup characteristic of this city. Painted bars on the entrance ward off thieves when the gate is locked at night. This evening, the gate is wide open to admit Argentinians performing last-minute errands before their 8 PM suppers.

The taxi, manned by an off-duty driver comes to a rolling halt on the unoccupied curb in front. Two men emerge and walk purposefully into the store. As the narrow hallway widens out to reveal the greater grocery, the man in front pulls out a small handgun shooting a rising security guard in the leg before firing randomly into the scattered shelves. The few panicked shoppers in the store duck behind aisles waiting for the gunfire to end. If they were to peer around the corner, they could see the other man filming the shooting. He will later share the video with Chinese grocers around the city as a warning.

In moments, the two men turn around, get back in the taxi, and disappear into the night.

What happened that night was not isolated, online sources say at least 31 Chinese have been murdered in BA since 2009. These aren’t random hate crimes against an immigrant group — these are attacks from within the Chinese community. The reported perpetrators are likely local gangs likely connected with the Triad (secret societies that operate within mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong).

So why do Chinese gangs move all the way to Argentina just to terrorize their countrymen? There are a couple of potential answers I’ve learned:

Chinese general stores are now as much a part of Argentinian culture as the empanada stall or the cafe. Dubbed “Chinos” they are the go-to spot for anyone hoping to buy food after most major chains close. They are also a means to access some foreign imports like soy sauce. Chinese families who run Chinos team up and use connections back to their homeland to create import pipelines into Argentina.

Rumors regarding how these businesses operate are a hot topic among Argentinians. Most locals I talk to are convinced they do not pay a normal tax rate due to a secretive deal with the Chinese government (although this is hard to verify). Multiple sources tell me Chinos usually start businesses with loans from either Chinese banks or from the Chinese mafia. Loans from the latter come with strings attached: they pay protection fees for life or potentially meet their death.

Recently, loans from Chinese banks seem like a very viable funding source. In November 2012, Industrial Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) purchased an 80% stake in Standard Bank Argentina S.A. and entered the South American market. It was the first acquisition of a financial institution in Latin America, as well as the first overseas acquisition of a local mainstream commercial bank by a Chinese bank. Now ICBC is everywhere in Argentina and it seems simple enough for local Chinese transplants to pay back loans to the motherland.

Here’s what I’ve learned about Chinese origins in Argentina.

Many Chinese in Argentina are reportedly from Fujian province, coming over in an undocumented immigration wave in the 1990s looking for better opportunities. And since 2003, an estimated 100 thousand Chinese migrants from Fujian have continued arriving in Buenos Aires. I sourced this is sourced from a book called Chinese Immigration in Latin America: Some Cultural Contributions by Luciana Emilia Denardi.

Below is a Google Maps screenshot of Fujian province. Notice it is near the Taiwan Strait sandwiched between Shanghai and Guangdong province. Fujian is known as a major tea exporter with a relatively slower economy than other parts of the country like Guangdong. Many claim this is what precipitated a mass migration of Fujianese in the past few decades.

But Chinese have been coming to Argentina for a long time. Notably, in the 1980s, a large group of Taiwanese and some mainlanders came and founded the Buenos Aires China town. Taiwan was under military law until something like ‘87 and this caused quite a few nationals to clear out.

Chinos were first owned by these Taiwanese immigrants, who then sold them to Chinese immigrants who arrived in large numbers a decade later. They now are run by either this first generation of Fujianese or an even more recent wave of middle-class Chinese trying to make their way in the country.

Let’s talk more about gangs

It’s unclear whether these Chinese protection rackets are simply created by opportunistic locals or whether they were intentionally constructed to enforce Triad interests outside the mainland. More evidence points towards the latter.

I found a good article on the arrest of one of Argentina’s largest Chinese-run gangs, “The Pixu” 2016. Roughly 40 individuals were arrested, 34 of which were undocumented Chinese nationals along with a handful of Bolivians and local Argentinians. Their leader was identified as a Chinese national named A Di, the son of the leader of the global Pixiu gang operating out of China.

The Pixiu would reportedly first show up at a business pretending to be representatives from the Chinese Chamber of Entrepreneurs, Merchants, and Industrialists. After giving the merchants a loan, they’d extract a $50,000 fee upfront from these selected “protectorates” and then would continue to extract anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 ARS from these businesses every month. While that exchange rate is low now, in 2016 that was closer to $20,000 - $35,000. If no payment came in five days, merchants could expect to get shot in the kneecap or worse.

This sticker of a Pixiu was placed in Chinese stores that paid protection to the Pixiu.

Besides extortion, the Pixiu clan was involved in smuggling Chinese nationals into the country, forcing merchants to buy and resell expired stock, drug trafficking, and arms trafficking. They sometimes worked with other gangs to accomplish these projects.

Interestingly, there seems to have been a rule of not using Chinese soldiers to shoot other Chinese. For hits, they would coordinate to have them carried out by locals or immigrants. From what I understand, the hit coordinator for Pixiu remains at large.

To capture the Pixiu, Argentinian forces needed to bring in outside help directly from the Chinese embassy using a police commissioner dubbed “Martin”. Most communications were in Chinese and often this Chinese was in the often hard-to-understand Fujianese dialect of Mandarin or the local Hakka dialect which is unintelligible for Mandarin speakers. Local translators frequently misled police as their ties to the Chinese community often resulted in them being bribed to give false information.

However, while this 2016 breakup of the Pixiu clan may have dealt a heavy blow to local Triad operations, it’s obvious these groups are back in force today. Many suspect that this will be a downside to increased Chinese involvement throughout South America. I may do a follow-up article if I learn anything more about this.

Hope you enjoyed this article! As usual, let me know if you have any feedback.

-Peter