At the beginning of the year, false information circulated on social media that Bahia was suffering a "Chinese invasion".
Videos showed a set of accommodations that were being built to receive thousands of Chinese workers who would arrive to work at the recently opened BYD factory, in the metropolitan region of Salvador.
In 2025, BYD surpassed Tesla and became the largest electric car manufacturer in the world — and chose Camaçari, a city of 300,000 inhabitants in Bahia, to install its largest factory in Latin America. Em menos de um ano, já saíram mais de 100 mil carros de lá.
Since construction of the factory began in 2024, the issuance of visas to Chinese people has grown, but not explosively. Federal Police records show just over 2,000 visas in Camaçari and neighboring Lauro de Freitas, most of them temporary.
Mas qual é o impacto real da chegada da montadora e do novo fluxo de trabalhadores chineses para a Bahia? What has changed in the city? And what do residents think about these transformations — and about the future of Camaçari?
Reporter Camilla Veras Mota and video journalist Vitor Serrano went to the city to hear from those who are experiencing this change up close.
They found that a story that seems local is linked to a much larger transformation: the biggest shift in the auto industry in a century and the growing rivalry between the United States and China.
Check it out in the BBC News Brasil documentary.
