Take your money and get lost
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Many from the richest part of today’s China did not believe in talks about common prosperity and so from Hong Kong in years 1984-1997 (when HK was returned under Chinese control) nearly 1 million people emigrated (about one eight of population).
(Despite different average in Hong Kong is economical inequality even bigger than in rest of China.)
Even more people did not return from study abroad. To be more concrete: in years 1987-2009 it was about 1 160 000 people. But gradually returns more and more, during for world crisis year 2009 it was already 56 percent.
In that time they returned because of problems abroad, many with foreign passport (although sometimes hidden – China does not allow double citizenship), to try find a job at home or to outsource their business to country with lower costs.
But together with growing return of so called “sea turtles” another escape began – this time of the richest Chinese.
To be fair: people with money were escaping from China already before. In connection with this it is common to mention leaving corrupt officials running off with 50 billion US dollars. But, how China Media Project points out, quoted number comes from year 2002, so it needs serious update.
Since 2009 began mass exodus in group of rich.
In recent study released by China Merchants Bank is mentioned that till now emigrated abroad more the quarter of 20 000 Chinese multimillionaires (with more than 100 million yuan in assets, over USD 15 million), and around 60% of those with more than USD 1,500,000 in assets – this number is close to million – have already or are planning to do so.
The richest are emigrating economically, what means they buy new citizenship by big enough investment typically to American, Canadian or Australian economy. Together with investment to already cheaper Western properties.
Translated from cina.exil.sk, author Tibor Blazko.
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June 13th, 2011 at 3:27 am
Here in China the public property laws (regarding owning apartments/homes, etc) are very fluid (ahem)… Why not move to a country with a real legal system? Not only are they gaining something by leaving (relaxing lifestyle, etc) they’re not losing their hard-earned wealth by holding it here. That would sure suck if the government bulldozed your shiny new villa….
On the flip side, lots of Canadian and American Chinese are coming to the Mainland for kicks, but obviously they’re not gonna retire here. Party in China, Settle down and retire in the real world.
June 20th, 2011 at 7:35 pm
I don’t see this as a big deal in fact, that the Chinese government is actually encouraging it. China has been been on the receiving end on large amount of “hot money” and FDI into the country ever since the 2008 economic collapse on the West. Ever since, the Chinese government has been putting many restrictions on the kind of investment that you can put in. So why not these rich Chinese put their money abroad?
July 26th, 2011 at 10:12 am
According to China Daily [over the past eight years], 15 [Chinese billionaires] were murdered, 17 committed suicide, seven died from accidents and 19 died from illness. Oh, yes, and 14 were executed.
http://blogs.forbes.com/raykwong/2011/07/25/friends-dont-let-friends-become-chinese-billionaires/
August 15th, 2011 at 2:34 am
The two most important reasons why these people are talking their money away are:
1. The money is not clean. In China you almost have play in the gray area in order to get filthy rich for two reasons: first, many officials in the government are corrupted. To get pass them, you have to play dirty. Second, all your competitors are playing dirty, so you can’t compete by staying clean. As a result, most rich people have something to hide and they don’t want to risk being caught someday. So they get the money and move out;
2. They worry about their children. Many of them want their children to be educated abroad, live a better environment, not worrying about food poisoning, etc;
China seems to understand these problems so they are not actively trying to prevent such people from leaving. Unless you fix these problems — you can’t really keep these people. These are just like before so many people studied abroad and not returning, but now they are returning because China sometimes offers better opportunities for them.
For people who left because their money is not clean, they of course try to take their money away. For large cases that involve a lot of people/officials, China will probably try to hunt them down, such as the case of Laichangxing. For others, China usually just let it be. It’s true that these people take their money away, but they also take their way of doing business away — which is not desired anyway. If you compare the same amount of money in their hand if they didn’t leave and in the form of FDI, China would probably prefer FDI.
August 19th, 2011 at 4:48 pm
Do You know what China is doing to bring their students back from abroad and keep the people from emigrating? For example in Estonia we had a quite large campaign named ” Talents back to home'” where the goverment helped to bring people back from all over the world… of course the situation is different we have only 1,3million people so everyone is important 🙂
August 22nd, 2011 at 8:11 am
if i remember well more often returning are state-sponsored students, but as far as i know there are no special campaigns in this area (even i was reading some older quotes like it’s not so bad have some own people abroad)
common people have bigger problem find developed country will accept them than be able to leave country, what it quite opposite to former easteuropean experience
now it is problem also for educated students – f.e. see recent immigration limiting events in usa
December 18th, 2012 at 6:26 am
rich people (of all countries) do not acquire their fortunes ethically. China is better off without these people. however, these Chinese will soon discover that living in western countries is not all fun and games, and they will be greeted with a rude awakening. i guess it all balances out. the rich Chinese will screw people over in China to get rich. when they get to america, canada, and australia, they will be the ones getting screwed.
February 20th, 2013 at 7:20 am
All the comments before me here are all mostly wrong. Why speculate? just ask us Chinese.
Chinese people have been migrating to different countries since the beginning of time and for many reasons.
There is no theory or conspiracy behind it.