Cities and markets: migrations and trade routes from São Paulo to Guangzhou and Yiwu

Abstract

From China's economic opening in the late 1970s, a socio-economic dynamic has been linking wholesale centers in China and Brazil through trade flows and migratory mobility. These are routes supplying the Brazilian popular markets with the widest range of goods, and it also involves a constant movement of people, particularly between São Paulo and the Chinese cities of Guangzhou and Yiwu. This project proposes a research about the development of these trade routes in a dual perspective: first, from changes in regime of mobility in China, with the increase of migration, policies of rapprochement with chinese overseas and incentives for promotion of trade with the homeland; second, from policies of distribution and circulation promoted from Guangzhou and Yiwu through fairs and markets organized by the State that bring together thousands of small producers and attract traders from all over the world. The analyze about how cities and markets communicate through these migratory motilities' and trade routes is a key to problematize the development of other geographies of capitalism articulated from the "south-to-south axis", in which China plays a central role. (AU)