Wealthy Chinese Are Voting with their Feet

It is not just the poor and oppressed who vote with their feet. The rich and oppressed are doing it, too. Even the very rich. China's wealthy are fleeing the country. First, they send hundreds of billions of dollars to overseas destinations and then they follow their money. China's rich now have about $658 billion in offshore assets, according to WealthInsight. And half of China's very wealthy, who are worth at least $16 million, are reported to have investments overseas. Chinese buyers bought more than $8 billion worth of residential real estate in the United States alone in the 12 months that ended in March, 2013. Another study, by Bank of China and Hurun, a firm that tracks China's rich, shows that more than half of China's millionaires are considering moving to another country or have already taken steps to do so. "Many experts say the wealthy are moving to protect their wealth, their health, and their families," according to CNBC : "With China increasingly cracking down on ill-gotten gains and corruption, many of the politically connected wealthy are looking for safer havens abroad....They are also looking for better environments for their children, with better schools and cleaner air." As of November, 2013, China had 157 billionaires, whose average age is 53, nine years below the global average. Many of these wealthy Chinese are "anxious," NPR says, "because income inequality is staggering, corruption systemic, and public protests a daily occurrence." According to Newsmax, Oliver Hua, who does market research for Western companies in China, says that in China, "You get rich working with the government. If you don't work with the government, you may get nothing and you may lose everything. That probably is the most dangerous situation." One study found that 17% of the billionaires on the Hurun Rich List - China's version of the Forbes list - finish in court or in prison. ~~~~~ Dear readers, it is not easy to imagine someone choosing to work hard enough to become very rich, when to do so means that they are pressured to become part of a corrupt system in which the source of the corruption is the system itself - public officials who may, for reasons of political expediency, turn on the very people who are making them rich, too. It reminds me of post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s when the oligarchs were allowed to become enormously rich if they would stay out of politics and "take care of" the political leadership. When the Russian oligarchs began to fear that their political masters were turning on them, they fled to London. Those who stayed and fought the system ended up in Siberian prisons. And now it seems that the Chinese equivalent of the Russian oligarchs, made rich by playing the corruption game with crooked Chinese politicians, are also afraid. And they are fleeing, to London and to Canada and to America. Not surprising because the Chinese have had ties to America ever since the first American missionaries created schools in China in the early 20th century. The Chinese have sent their children to university in the US, and they have copied American style and technology. They are the living proof that America's Janis face is at least half turned toward Asia and its natural leader, China. But today, the rich Chinese are fleeing because a new generation of Chinese Communist leaders fear a backlash against systemic corruption from citizens better educated, more affluent and less afraid of their Communist overlords. America should welcome these wealthy Chinese political refugees - and their money. They are the first wave of the future of China - politically savvy and independent, astute business leaders ready to put their ample resources to work in the cause of a more open and modern Chinese economy and government.