Tensions rise as Chinese move, en masse, into a Paris neighborhood

PARIS: The Sedaine-Popincourt neighborhood in eastern Paris, once lined with boulangeries, butchers, hairdressers and fishmongers, now has block after block of Chinese wholesale clothing shops. With culturally opaque names like Splendide, Wonderful, Lola, Trend Attitude and Pull & Sweat, the 550 outlets sell inexpensive apparel to retailers worldwide.

Their swelling numbers have overwhelmed efforts by local groups and the mayor of the 11th arrondissement, Georges Sarre, to block the spread of what he calls "mono-activity" - clusters of stores that all sell the same product.

The brewing battle in this small patch of Paris is a fishbowl version of France's reluctance to accept both the pain and the promise of an increasingly competitive international economy, which the newly elected president, Nicolas Sarkozy, says the country must face up to.

"Nobody can escape globalization," he said in a speech during his successful campaign. "The world is moving very fast, and we have not been able to move at the same rate."

France has a complicated relationship with the idea of a free market, let alone with its worldwide version. In a poll published in April 2006, only 36 percent of French people interviewed agreed that free enterprise was the best system for the world's future.

The Chinese began flocking to the narrow streets of this neighborhood in the 1990s, joining pioneers who set up clothing shops in an area that already had a few household linen wholesalers.

Now two-thirds of about 800 street-level businesses are Chinese-owned outlets crowded with boxes and racks of cheap cotton and polyester garments. Buyers come from as far away as Russia and Latin America - but not from around the block. "Do not insist" signs in some shop windows warn against trying to purchase one T-shirt or a pair of pants. Sales are strictly in bulk.

The merchants - mostly from Wenzhou, a city in Zhejiang Province in southeastern China - have clustered together partly to defend their interests against an increasingly hostile city hall, which they say closely monitors them for violations that range from trash pickup to illegal laborers.

"It makes sense for us to protect our businesses," said Frank Michael, director of Mystic, one of the Chinese-owned shops.

Martine Cohen founded Act in Solidarity with the Sedaine- Popincourt Neighborhood to protest the spread of the stores. The 56-year-old sociologist, who moved to the district in 1995, ticks off some of the establishments that have since moved out: four cafés, a vegetable store, an antique toy store, butcher shops, news kiosks - and her own hairdresser.

"She couldn't take it anymore," Cohen said. "There were wholesalers on either side of her, and trucks parked in front of her door. So she left, like everyone else."

Responding to residents' frustration, made worse by honking horns and blocked traffic, the city council in June 2006 adopted a law prohibiting wholesalers from setting up shop in residential buildings.

The city, at Sarre's urging, is also giving €54 million, or $72.5 million, over 10 years to Semaest, a community development agency, to promote economic diversity.

To date, Semaest, which is 60 percent owned by the city, has purchased 125 shops in the district. It leases them to small businesses at market rents, waiving turnover costs and business licensing fees. The recipients of this largesse include an organic food store, an optician and a bicycle shop.

"I wouldn't be in this neighborhood otherwise," said Angelo Lani, owner of the restaurant La Barcarola da Angelo, who said his previous landlord forced him out of his old premises. The help from Semaest effectively slashed a third off his relocation costs, he said.

Sarre, who declined to be interviewed, has also pressed for the enactment of a 2005 law that would allow the city to step in and block a wholesaler from taking over a commercial lease. France's constitutional council rejected an earlier version of the law as "contrary to the freedom of markets and industry."

"We are cutting the grass from under the feet of the mono-activity," Sarre, 71, said at a Feb. 5 demonstration. "The basic problem is the presence in the center of the city" of businesses "that are totally inappropriate and which should be moved to the periphery or the suburbs."

Maxime Zhang, president of the Association of the Chinese Prêt-à-Porter Merchants, says the mayor's campaign is a violation of free enterprise principles. "You can't just block things," Zhang said. "If someone sells a store, someone else buys; there's no problem."

Zhang, the owner of the wholesaler Maxime Z, has been in Paris for 23 years. Several other proprietors, speaking in stumbling French, declined to comment on neighborhood politics.

Some residents now question whether Sarre's angry crusade is the right approach. Even Cohen wonders what would happen if the Chinese actually left. "Who would take over the boutiques," she said. "Who would come? People turning everything into expensive lofts? Is that what we want?"