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PRATO, ITALY - 25 NOVEMBER 2019: A view of a general items store in the Chinatown of Prato, Italy, on November 25th 2019.

Today, roughly one-tenth of the city’s 200,000 inhabitants are Chinese immigrants who have arrived legally, while many estimates put the total number at 45,000 after accounting for those without proper documents.
Chinese grocery stores and restaurants have emerged to serve the local population. On the outskirts of the city, Chinese entrepreneurs oversee warehouses teeming with racks of clothing destined for markets across the continent. Estimates have it that 80 percent of clothing sold in street markets within the European Union is made by Chinese workers in Prato.

Italy has proved especially vulnerable to China’s emergence as a manufacturing juggernaut, given that many of its artisanal trades -- textiles, leather, shoe-making -- have long been dominated by small, family-run businesses that lacked the scale to compete on price with factories in a nation of 1.4 billion people.
In recent years, four Italian regions that were as late as the 1980s electing Communists and then reliably supported center-left candidates -- Tuscany, Umbria, Marche and Emilia-Romagna -- have swung dramatically to the extreme right. Many working class people say that delineation has it backwards: The left abandoned them, not the other way around.

Between 2001 and 2011, Prato’s 6,000 textile companies shrunk to 3,000, and those employed by the plants plunged from 40,000 to 19,000, according to Confindustria, the leading Italian industrial trade association. As Prato’s factories went dark, people began arriving from China - mostly from the coastal city of Wenzhou, famed for its industriousness - to exploit an opportunity.
They set up sewing machines across the concrete floors and imported fabric from factories in China. They sewed clothes, cannily imitating the styles of Italian fashion brands. They affixed a valuable label to their creations: “Made In Ital

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©2019 Gianni Cipriano
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www.giannicipriano.com
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20191125_NYT_ItalyCrisis
PRATO, ITALY - 25 NOVEMBER 2019: A view of a general items store in the Chinatown of Prato, Italy, on November 25th 2019.<br /> <br /> Today, roughly one-tenth of the city’s 200,000 inhabitants are Chinese immigrants who have arrived legally, while many estimates put the total number at 45,000 after accounting for those without proper documents. <br /> Chinese grocery stores and restaurants have emerged to serve the local population. On the outskirts of the city, Chinese entrepreneurs oversee warehouses teeming with racks of clothing destined for markets across the continent. Estimates have it that 80 percent of clothing sold in street markets within the European Union is made by Chinese workers in Prato.<br /> <br /> Italy has proved especially vulnerable to China’s emergence as a manufacturing juggernaut, given that many of its artisanal trades -- textiles, leather, shoe-making -- have long been dominated by small, family-run businesses that lacked the scale to compete on price with factories in a nation of 1.4 billion people. <br /> In recent years, four Italian regions that were as late as the 1980s electing Communists and then reliably supported center-left candidates -- Tuscany, Umbria, Marche and Emilia-Romagna -- have swung dramatically to the extreme right. Many working class people say that delineation has it backwards: The left abandoned them, not the other way around. <br /> <br /> Between 2001 and 2011, Prato’s 6,000 textile companies shrunk to 3,000, and those employed by the plants plunged from 40,000 to 19,000, according to Confindustria, the leading Italian industrial trade association. As Prato’s factories went dark, people began arriving from China - mostly from the coastal city of Wenzhou, famed for its industriousness - to exploit an opportunity.<br /> They set up sewing machines across the concrete floors and imported fabric from factories in China. They sewed clothes, cannily imitating the styles of Italian fashion brands. They affixed a valuable label to their creations: “Made In Ital