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Half of China's millionaires want to leave country

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Re: Half of China's millionaires want to leave country

#61

Post by _delirium »

stickfigure wrote: post #60
_delirium wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all true, but doesn't seem particularly "communist" in a relevant way--- that was also true of Greece under the junta, or Spain under Franco. Wouldn't it be more accurate to just call China an authoritarian or one-party state? 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…

doesn't seem particularly "communist" in a relevant way 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.

Oh, that wasn't the angle I was going for; I'm not arguing that "real communism will work" or something. Just that it doesn't seem meaningfully different from "non-communist" authoritarian states, so the label "communist" appears to be a historical anachronism that doesn't add any real information in 2011, versus just calling it a "one-party" or "authoritarian" state. In the 1960s, at least, it added the additional bit of information that the government was attempting to suppress market economics, but that part isn't true anymore.

Re: Half of China's millionaires want to leave country

#62

Post by quant18 »

The original report is here (in Chinese): http://pic.bankofchina.com/bocappd/report/201111/P0201111015...

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-...

Re: Half of China's millionaires want to leave country

#63

Post by zanny »

Since this is Hacker News and all, I'll pose a question: we had that news story on how few Indian hackers and tech startups there are, what about in China? Are any of these millionaires profiting off things like Baidu is with web tech working for the government?

Re: Half of China's millionaires want to leave country

#64

Post by jonhendry »

dgallagher wrote: post #49

One quarter of China’s top 1000 richest people obtained their wealth from property, compared to less than 10% among the world’s 1000 richest, the report says. 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 wo…

It makes perfect sense, as many of those who made a fortune in property probably obtained that land through party connections and/or party corruption. How else would they have obtained 'property' in China?

Re: Half of China's millionaires want to leave country

#65

Post by tomkarlo »

kissickas wrote: post #8

Can someone enlighten me on how so many (or so few) people got so rich off of property?

It's not unique to China. There's a long tradition of powerful families creating wealth from the growth of a city or economy by buying up real estate, promoting the growth of a city, then benefitting from the radical increase in real estate value that results as land transitions from agrarian to urban.

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.

Re: Half of China's millionaires want to leave country

#66

Post by angkec »

This may add more insight: I'm Chinese (mainlander) myself and I'm not rich (student). All my friends are not rich either. Yet almost everyone wants to leave the country.

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.

Re: Half of China's millionaires want to leave country

#67

Post by ced »

angkec wrote: post #66

This may add more insight: I'm Chinese (mainlander) myself and I'm not rich (student). All my friends are not rich either. Yet almost everyone wants to leave the country. 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 s…

Is the situation improving?

Re: Half of China's millionaires want to leave country

#68

Post by angkec »

ced wrote: post #67
angkec wrote: post #66

This may add more insight: I'm Chinese (mainlander) myself and I'm not rich (student). All my friends are not rich either. Yet almost everyone wants to leave the country. 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 s…

Is the situation improving?

No. The worst thing is it's going down: living costs are getting much higher because of inflation while wages are far from catching up, real estate is still in a bubble, and it feels like the gov is getting more and more corrupted, blocking ordinary people from having a decent/good life.

Re: Half of China's millionaires want to leave country

#70

Post by r00fus »

chaostheory wrote: post #27
wisty wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd expect a number of extremely rich Chinese oligarchs have been shot for treason, as some forms of corruption are punishable by the death penalty. 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 sancti…

> outright theft of government funds and property 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.

It also gets laundered through Hong Kong (mostly Lantau) through gambling (a good reason to be against gambling in general - it's a very well known way to launder money)
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