The Ford Chinese Association, with 650 white-collar workers, predominantly from mainland China, has become one of the largest employee groups at the company. Its president, Raymond Xu, recalled that in 1999, when he came to Detroit to attend college, there were very few Chinese in the area.

“I think people are going to get more and more comfortable with it,” Mr. Xu said.

Typical of the Chinese expansion are the nondescript offices of Changan Automotive in an industrial park in the suburban city of Plymouth. Changan, a major carmaker in China, set up a research center to better understand the structural chassis of a vehicle — then hired about 20 Detroit engineers, some of whom had been laid off from Detroit’s auto companies, to staff the project.

“Most of the engineers are very young in China,” said Hong Su, the Changan executive heading the American facility. “They know how to make vehicles, but they don’t know how to develop them.”One of his employees is Alan Wall, 54, a former contract engineer at Chrysler who lost his job during the recession.

“It was an opportunity,” he said. “And those tend to come from a company that is trying to expand.”

Last year, China exported about $13 billion in automotive goods to the United States — tires, wheels and radios that are sold as replacement parts — according to AlixPartners, a consulting firm.

But many Chinese suppliers are pursuing direct business with the Detroit car companies, which now get many of their most common parts from low-wage nations like Mexico. One supplier, Brilliance Auto, an industrial giant with about 500,000 employees in the city of Shenyang in northeast China, is still an underdog in Detroit, trying to crack an intricate network of suppliers that have long relationships with G.M. and the other carmakers.

“We have been exporting our parts to North America for 15 years for the aftermarket,” said Dongbin Chen, a Brilliance executive, referring to retail sales of replacement parts. “Now our biggest opportunity is with G.M. and the other big companies.”

Brilliance scored a coup last year by supplying lightweight engine mounts for the new Cadillac ATS sedan made by G.M. in Lansing, Mich., which has whetted the company’s appetite for more.