by amitagrawal on 11/9/11, 2:30 PM with 104 comments
by angkec on 11/9/11, 10:14 PM
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.
by espeed on 11/9/11, 3:14 PM
"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.
by Volpe on 11/10/11, 1:50 AM
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...
by MengYuanLong on 11/9/11, 4:09 PM
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).
by tomkarlo on 11/9/11, 6:37 PM
by oblat on 11/9/11, 5:43 PM
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.
by quant18 on 11/9/11, 7:53 PM
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-...
by fredliu on 11/9/11, 6:08 PM
“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.
by AdamFernandez on 11/9/11, 4:02 PM
by folkster on 11/9/11, 3:56 PM
by kissickas on 11/9/11, 3:33 PM
by vph on 11/9/11, 4:03 PM
by dgallagher on 11/9/11, 5:51 PM
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.
by itsnotvalid on 11/9/11, 3:32 PM
by zanny on 11/9/11, 8:25 PM
by tryitnow on 11/9/11, 11:30 PM
by known on 11/10/11, 2:38 PM
by keyworks on 11/10/11, 7:09 AM
by androidstar on 11/12/11, 8:38 AM
by berntb on 11/9/11, 3:25 PM
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.
by _yobq on 11/9/11, 3:09 PM
by DamnYuppie on 11/9/11, 3:07 PM
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.