"Modern" Chinatown is located in Spring Valley, NV less than 1 mile from the Las Vegas Strip.

Chinatown is located in Spring Valley, NV. Along Spring Mountain Road in Spring Valley is a series of strip malls with ethnic Chinese and other pan-Asian businesses, with the original called Chinatown Plaza. Historically, the strip mall was conceived by Taiwanese American JHK Investment Group, Inc. and opened in 1995. Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn officially designated the area as Chinatown in October 1999 and it continues to grow as the Asian population in Las Vegas expands rapidly. The Chinatown area has gained much popularity, receiving national attention in a 2004 article by The Wall Street Journal (See Further Reading below for the specific citation). Huffington Post classifies Las Vegas Chinatown along with Atlanta-Chamblee, Dallas-Richardson, and North Miami Beach as a "modern" styled Chinatown, that contrasts with the historic core Chinatowns like New York and San Francisco.^[7] The Chinatown is pan-Asian in nature instead of being completely Chinese according to the previous source. The official website for the Chinatown Plaza indicates that Spring Mountain Road is the general corridor for the neighborhood.^[8]

The history of Chinese population in the Las Vegas Valley shows that the Chinese population remained small throughout most of its history. As a result, a Chinatown could only be created with initiative from entrepreneurs that would in essence fabricate a scenario that came naturally in other large cities that have historically important Chinatowns.^[9] According to Tsui in her book, Las Vegas's Chinese population boomed starting from the 1960s and by the 1990s, the Chinese population grew to 15,000 with the majority working in the casino industry. Even as the population grew, the "Chinatown experiment" could not rely on the local Chinese population to create it, but relied on a label on the plaza itself before people knew it was "Chinatown". As a saleswoman visiting the Chinatown answered "How do I know this is Chinatown?" Her answer was "Because it says so right on the arch, in Chinese characters (Zhongguo Cheng)"^[10]

According to Tsui's book, Senator Harry Reid "... ordered a sign to be put up for Chinatown [along Interstate 15]..." but was taken down by the order of the governor of Nevada Bob Miller. In 1996, the Clark County, Nevadadesignated the area as "Chinatown".