A friend back home buys and ships him goods, which arrive by container in Constanta, Romania's Black Sea port. They're ruining our prices. Our markup is only 3 to 5 percent. Otherwise, we'd be destroyed by the competition,'' said Gabriela Bercean, who sells Romanian-made sweaters with her partner, Reza Karimi, an Iranian. Inflation is high, the economy is expected to shrink this year and purchasing power has plummeted, along with the currency.
Many Chinese traders get goods on credit from state-owned factories in their home provinces.
State-owned foreign trade companies offer attractive credit, as low as 6 percent for dollar loans. Romanian employees must be paid, along with at least a nominal amount of taxes to keep the financial police at bay. On top of this, there are the spaga, or payoffs to Romanian police, and fu-pai for Chinese gangs. The five main Chinese business groups in Romania, each built around a home region in mainland China, have parallel mafias to collect the protection money and enforce the rules, say officers of the organized crime squad in Bucharest. America is a melting pot nation, but these Chinese people came here to make business.