Many wealthy Chinese seek to emigrate or covet an international passport, recent surveys have found. A growing concern for these tycoons is wealth security.
The “Private Banking White Paper of 2011,” released on Oct. 29 as a combined effort of various banking and financial institutions, stated that 14 percent of the rich have already emigrated or are applying for it, while another 50 percent regard it favorably.
A third of the Chinese who are considered to have a high net worth (over 10 million yuan in assets, equivalent to US$1.57 million) already own overseas real estate, constituting 19 percent of their total investments.
The White Paper also stated that of those among them who do not yet own assets overseas, nearly 30 percent will invest overseas within the next three years.
The founder of the “Hurun Rich List,” Rupert Hoogewerf, asserts that wealthy Chinese regard possession of a foreign passport as insurance. After all, things can go wrong in a large country like China; once political turmoil or reform happens, the rich can easily take shelter abroad with their foreign passports—a guarantee of their safety.
The Editor-in-Chief of Hong Kong’s “Trend” magazine, Zhang Weiguo, says that according to publicly available data, more than 90 percent of the regime’s governors and ministers have arranged the emigration of their families and children, and this does not include corrupt officials who have been dismissed from their posts and have done likewise.
The “2011 China’s Private Wealth Study,” conducted by the China Merchants’ Bank and Bain & Company and released in April this year, indicated that nearly 60 percent of high net worth individuals have either completed their overseas investment goals or have plans to do so.
The three main reasons for the swelling emigration tide are: children’s education (accounting for 58 percent), wealth protection (43 percent) and preparation for future retirement (32 percent).
Other reasons include: business development and expansion, travel convenience, low taxation and the opportunity to bear more children (denied by the Chinese regime’s one child policy).
Read the original Chinese article.
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