Half of China's millionaires want to leave country
business.blogs.cnn.com
business.blogs.cnn.com
This is probably due to high real estate prices (around 1M RMB in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai for a decent apartment that can get you a girl to marry you, yet you don't really "own" the property even if you buy it. Technically the state still owns your apartment and you were just paying for "usage fee" because that's how communism/socialism works. In comparison, newly college graduates earns around 6k RMB/mo); broken health care system (probably worse than the U.S, since most of the Chinese family are relying on their only child to provide health care money when they grow older); harsh job market (simply too many people for not so many jobs, so the wage becomes low); and plus, a dim future for all of the lower income families or family without connections.
Yes you can argue that there's so many opportunities in China, but somehow we voted with our feet: everyone who has a means to leave left. Most of the famous Chinese actors are now foreign citizens or at least with a green card alike. For average families, they send their kids overseas for school. That's why you see so many Chinese students overseas, doing boring PhD degrees if they are poor or enroll as an undergrad if their family could afford. For their families, getting their kids to an overseas school is like taking the first step to a much more promising future.
The fee part sounds like something other than communism.
The propaganda has invented a new saying, calling this the Chinese Socialism, and it tries to credit itself for the economic boom after the 1980s. We the people think that the gov is just trying to collect massive money after they abandoned soviet communism so everyone had a chance to make a better life. The chance is getting slimmer as the gov is getting much more greedy than in the 80s.
Second, you can't prove overpopulation is as serious as the government claims, nor can you prove their "solution" fixes it.
Third, if it is as serious as is claimed, it will affect the world (anthropogenic environmental impact, immigration, etc...), so it's everyone's worry.
My other co-worker hates it that Chinese girls seem to prefer foreign boyfriends (albeit a stereotype, but who knows how reflective it is of reality?). He deems it particularly difficult because there are so many more men then women in China already.
"China Daily reported Friday that unnatural deaths have taken the lives of 72 mainland billionaires over the past eight years. (Do the math.) Which means that if you’re one of China’s 115 current billionaires, as listed on the 2011 Forbes Billionaires List, you should be more than a little nervous." (http://www.forbes.com/sites/raykwong/2011/07/25/friends-dont...).
I wonder how much fear is playing into this desire for exodus.
There's a lot of really nasty shit that happens in China. Babies dying from additives to their milk formula, organs being stolen, farmers being driven off communes to build illegal factories, outright theft of government funds and property ... none of it is really sanctioned.
When the officials who set themselves up as feudal lords get busted, they can go down hard. Even if their superiors were previously turning a blind eye, if it hits Weibo (the Chinese Twitter) then things can get ugly.
Yeah most of that ends up in North America. imo They tend to buy housing in cash for their children mostly in either Vancouver or the Bay Area.
A few big fish will grab a staggeringly huge amount, then run. We are talking huge amounts here, though, not a Chinese millionaire looking for a house for their kids. There's a total of $120 billion missing, taken by an estimated 16,000 officials. Only the poorer ones will be buying what you would describe as a "house".
I'd think most of the Chinese buying houses for their kids are essentially legit businessmen. They probably use cash because Chinese just hate debt. They also see it as an investment, because houses are some of the only things Chinese trust - they see shares as giving a total stranger your money to play with, in the hopes that he gives you more back (I mean, have you seen what US CEOs get paid?).
Not the instances that I know of. They are corrupt Chinese gov officials using embezzled money on homes that typically cost 1-4 million USD (mostly in the 2's from what I've seen).
Check out http://www.crackshackormansion.com/part2.html to see how bad it's gotten.
It's such a dangerous political climate because you can't escape the corruption, so the party can bring you down at any moment if you start being a problem for them.
edit: I should have read the article first. Only some of the deaths are from official corruption charges. The rest I can't say for sure.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/72-millionaires-die-young-in-C...
Anyway, there's a complex mix of people in China afraid of being killed.
Silly to say "half of china's millionaires want to leave" without saying how that percentage is different from "all chinese"...
China long ago loosened restrictions on emigration, to allow Chinese to be educated overseas and then (hopefully) return to China, so that it could benefit. I think this increase of emigration could be a natural progression of that policy (as Chinese now have a lot more ties in other countries).
The 'unaffordable housing' issue, sounds similar to Australia (Median house price is 8+X median yearly/salary), so I doubt it is a reason for leaving.
People who are saying it's "too be free", are clearly just anti-P.R.C, again, by-in-large chinese are happy/apathetic about the govt in china. Those that care about politics, join the party and have just as many rights (to vote and affect change as americans have).
Very difficult to work out 'truth' here...
That said, I have my doubts they would be able to directly ask, "Do you want to emigrate?". So perhaps that is why they tacked on the education bit for plausible deniability (i.e. I love my country but my child should go to Harvard).
China has a lot of internal tensions, not the least of which is that as people become more affluent, they start to want greater transparency from the government, greater fairness, and more independence. All of those desires put them in conflict with the current regime. The party may be able to keep things under control, but I don't think there's any question that it's already grappling to maintain order via censorship, suppression of dissent, etc.
- censorship (like wikileaks) - Suppression of dissent (like the 'Occupy movement' is being suppressed).
Governments (regardless of ideology) try to avoid dissent, as it's damaging to those in power...
Also note: Most chinese (i'd say) don't worry about this. So the point is a little over dramatic.
Some one care to enlighten me how the censorship of wikileaks is any different to the great fire wall? (Slightly different scale, but they both illustrate censorship).
Or the suppression the of the Occupy Movement is different from the concept of "suppression of dissent". That is the forcible removal of people with views the government doesn't want to hear.
I haven't even mention the Patriot Act and how it has been exploited...
Rocks and glasshouses...
Came pretty close to tanks...
Tiananmen square protests (what the "Tanks" were implying) were not peaceful. They started that way, but they were not that way, when the military stepped in. There have been numerous reports that the 'trigger' moment, was a group of soldiers being isolated and threatened or attacked.
I love you are saying The US is a very free country in response to the L.A riots... the irony is not missed :D
There was a comment (I think on Top Gear, so take it with a grain) that if you drive a new Porsche through Beijing, the air coming out the tailpipe is cleaner then the air going in the front.
The reality is that Chinese rich are hedging like all the rich do. Putting 20% of your wealth in a safe investment outside your home country is not unusual. And they are gearing up to send their child overseas to the best schools they can find - just like all the other tiger economies did.
Later on I'll have a read and translate any interesting parts of it. Right now it's 4 AM here, I'm coming off a long and not-very-fun debugging session, and I'm going to sleep.
There was a very similar report published about half a year ago by China Merchants Bank. HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2660178
I blogged about that report and translated some portions of it at the time, see there for my thoughts on these things. my analysis in short: not many people taking concrete action, not many people leaving permanently. http://notlearningcantonese.posterous.com/rich-emigrants-as-...
“We see too many worried entrepreneurs nowadays who are afraid that they would end up in prison for offending Chinese officials,” You gotta be kidding me, most of the richest Chinese ARE the Chinese officials!! If they do end up in jail, it has much more to do with them accumulating their wealth illegally by abusing their power, than say, publicly posing a middle finger to Mr. Hu.
This article looks like just another typical heavily biased manipulative CNN crap, which throws in some data at first to make it believable, and then hijacked the real reason behind the data, adding their own interpretation. Reading CNN's news on China is just like reading Fox's news on Obama.
As for traditional media, the Economist does tend to be relatively neutral, and not adding too much of their own "secret ingredients". But that's just my own opinion.
The question is not freedom but legal security. Here in China you never know when the goverment will show up and take you money or company away from you.
It is how everything works in a Communist society, everything bends to the party, the people, the land, the environment. The results to each is usually the same.
Your statement is both true and unfitting to the thread here. The truth is that the current governing policies of the Communist Party of China (CPC) are not doctrinaire communism, in the Marxist-Leninist sense, but rather "socialism with Chinese characteristics," as that party officially labels those policies. But the key political point, and the key motivation for many people wanting to leave China, is that the CPC is the sole ruling party and has been since 1949. Ideology bounces around, but the grip of the CPC on political power on all levels, and on all the major means of gaining economic power, is never relaxed. Mass media in China are subject to prepublication review by censors who are staff members ("cadres") of the CPC. The most crucial distinction between crimes that are punished and crimes that are left unpunished is whether or not the crimes threaten the rule of the CPC. And many activities that are perfectly legal here and in all civilized countries of the world, such as political dissent, are illegal in China solely because they threaten the CPC's grip on power.
I speak Chinese. From time to time I have had the opportunity to participate in seminars with Chinese journalists in the United States, out of earshot of Chinese censors. Even today, I cannot reveal the name of one journalist who once expressed a frank opinion in the hearing of several Americans who are familiar with the situation in China. He said that if the common people of China had full access to uncensored news, the Communist Party of China would fall within a week. The huge efforts that the CPC-controlled government in China makes to set up a "Great Firewall of China" to control Internet access is a sign that the government greatly fears uncensored access to news for the Chinese populace.
Heck, even "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is a bit of an anachronism these days, and the people who take the old conception of it seriously are seen as left-wingers within the government; it's closer to "one-party capitalism with Chinese characteristics"...
Perhaps in some academic sense. On the other hand, can you name a single national experiment with communism that didn't become authoritarian? There are certainly plenty of ugly examples.
It is then further furled by a combination of speculative investment and local government/bank/construction industry collusion. This is quite similar to what happened to the States in post-2000 housing bubble, but in greater scale due to stronger government control and growing economy.
The SF peninsula is an example of this - families that made money in mining bought up land south of the city in the 1800s, then actively worked to promote policies that would lead to growth of the city in that direction.
Are they comparing the top-1000 richest people in China to the top-1000 richest people in the world? That's not a very good comparison. It's like comparing the top-1000 students from a single college, to the top-1000 students from every college in the entire world.
I'm not sure if the actual report makes this comparison too as I cannot read Chinese.
Or is political uncertainty the real problem -- the political climate next month can be halfway back to the cultural revolution?
Or a third alternative?
Edit: Word choice, for clarity.
I'm confused. Are we talking about China or Taiwan?
I am of the opinion that we should spend less time denigrating others and more time having open and honest discussion AND reporting of the issues facing us here in the U.S. Pointing out issues and flaws in others in now way helps fix the flaws in ourselves.
By the way, you are free to do your own research and publish a story about number of U.S. amount of rich people wanting to emigrate.