BBC News reports that increasing numbers of wealthy Chinese are buying foreign residency.
The EB-5 visa scheme [of the United States] is an investment-for-residency programme, handing out green cards as long as the investment can be shown to have created at least 10 jobs.
In 2006 Chinese nationals were granted just 63 visas under the scheme. Last year the figure had leapt to more than 2,408 and this year it is already above the 3,700 mark. ….
The scheme is open to any nationality but Chinese investors now make up 75% of the total. ….
The EB-5 data is not the only evidence. A survey last year of almost 1,000 Chinese dollar millionaires found 60% considering moving overseas.
China is now one of Australia’s biggest sources of migrants with figures released for 2011 showing that it had overtaken the UK for the first time.
And American estate agents have been reporting a big jump this year in the number of high-value home buyers from mainland China and Hong Kong.
John Sudworth, “Rich Chinese seeking overseas residency“, BBC News, 21 August 2012.
How many of those exiting Chinese are entrepreneurial, and how many are corrupt, accumulating wealth through connections with government officials? Perhaps some are both. We will probably never know.
