[JumpCrisscross]

> think the Canadian mortgages linked to Chinese accounts will likely all be paid

Out of curiosity, why? China's stock market is melting down in the midst of persistent deflation. A lot of people who thought they had liquidity may not anymore. Beijing could open the taps, but then that puts pressure on the currency.

[cbsmith]

> Out of curiosity, why? China's stock market is melting down in the midst of persistent deflation. A lot of people who thought they had liquidity may not anymore. Beijing could open the taps, but then that puts pressure on the currency.

The whole point of the money laundering operation is to get the money out of the country. China going to pot only accelerates it.

[JumpCrisscross]

> China going to pot only accelerates it

You have to have money to launder it. Also, if the currency keeps getting hammered, Beijing will crack down on the exit channels.

[alephnerd]

Most Chinese don't invest in their stock market. The accredited investor qualification is much harder to get than in the US.

Most investment is in real estate, which has remained fairly stable in Tier 1 cities (which is where most of the post-2008 Chinese Canadians are from)

To get more than the $50k limit out, people would use a hawala type system where you'd use assets in China as collateral and get guaranteed cash from a broker abroad.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Most Chinese don't invest in their stock market

Most Chinese aren’t buying British Columbian property.

> accredited investor qualification is much harder to get than in the US

On a relative basis, right? In absolute terms, it’s still very low. Similar to the practical requirements for opening an American brokerage account.

> Most investment is in real estate, which has remained fairly stable in Tier 1 cities

Do you have data for this? My impression was sales are being discouraged.

[alephnerd]

> Most Chinese aren’t buying British Columbian property.

Yep. They don't buy Chinese stocks either. They would invest in property within China.

The kind of Chinese moving to Canada (and Australia) after 2008 aren't "most Chinese".

They tend to be from much more affluent and connected backgrounds. Think businesspeople, large property owners, or middle level party members.

Upwardly mobile Chinese (eg. Those in the tech industry or finance) will target the US or Singapore if they emigrate because they can keep their careers - something which Canada absolutely sucks at (eg. Most foreign degrees aren't recognized, white collar salaries have largely stagnated since the 2000s, blue collar work like oil drilling pays much more)

Blue collar/middle class Chinese tend to target Malaysia, Thailand, or Singapore because it's easy for Chinese to emigrate and average salaries are higher and they can blend in as the Chinese diaspora is massive in all those countries

> On a relative basis, right? In absolute terms, it’s still very low. Similar to the practical requirements for opening an American brokerage account

But faith in it is low for most Chinese. The 2015-16 market crash was extremely volatile.

Also, stock investing is a new concept for a lot of Chinese - stock markets started unofficially in the 1987-1991 period, didn't formalize until 1997, and most companies preferred listing in Hong Kong or Singapore until the 2010s.

Also, if you have a finite amount of cash, you would be chasing the highest stable returns, and for most of the post-Mao era, that was in real estate.

> Do you have data for this

I'm using Shanghai as my example, but it's the same story for Shenzhen, Beijing, and Guangzhou - the Tier 1 cities.

The real estate bust happened in cities outside of those, but specifically, in property located outside the "Inner Ring"

Chinese cities are planned with 3 rings - an Inner Ring with all the businesses, government offices, and residential property of people working for both, a middle ring that would often be industrial but increasingly converted into residential, and an outer ring that was farmland until 10-15 years ago when it was converted to residential.

It's that expansion of outer ring construction in all cities across China that caused the property bust.

Inner Ring residential property is basically VIP. Those are the kinds of people buying property in Canada.

From 1995-2021 [0] From 2022 [1]

[0] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1325915/china-average-pr...

[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/243404/sale-price-of-res...