In the 1970s, Taiwan was in the middle of an industrial boom. The country's diplomatic links with Paraguay facilitated Taiwanese trade and migration to Ciudad del Este, a Paraguayan city bordering Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. In the 1980s, China's economic reforms lowered production costs: Taiwan's factories moved to mainland China, and Taiwanese migrants started trading there. These changes in the politics of value had an impact on the migrant community, and the Taiwanese began to reimagine their “Chineseness”—that is, their sense of belonging to the “greater China” area. In the present area of study, this development was intensified by an economic crisis that occurred in the Brazil–Paraguay border region from 2003. Drawing on ethnographic research, this article examines how identities changed during such distinctive periods of flexible accumulation. In a context marked by a transition from abundance to collapse, the identity of “Chineseness” constituted a mobile resource in a deterritorialized way of life, as well as a manifestation of power relations and cultural supremacy that culminated in interethnic inequality and conflict. [Brazil, China, Chinese diaspora, Chineseness, flexible identity, Paraguay, Taiwan]