Quote:
Originally Posted by Wahlberg
Going where or how are they doing this? I thought getting money out of China was rather difficult.
I remember reading all the stories about Chinese buying up properties in the US/Canada/Australia/..., is this still going on then? Somehow I can't imagine these ridiculous wealthy Chinese would stop buying, since the important thing is to get money out of the country.
Buy a 5 million property, even if it loses 500k in the current market it doesn't matter since that's the cost to get this done. So they are unaffected?
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Yes, individuals are finding it harder than ever to get out and get money out of the country but I'm not talking about $5M homes, I'm talking about $5B investments.
The big money moving is at the corp / institutional level, most western countries are tightening policy and raising interest rates while China is doing the opposite, loosening credit and lowering interest rates, so there's been a natural move to pull investment from China to EUR/USD zones as the relative return becomes more favorable. That's not politics or speculation, that's just normal boring asset allocation.
Additionally, the 0 covid policies and arbitrary market controls make China practically uninvestible killing capital inflows of foreign investment. No one wants to buy China bonds with the recent defaults. This is forcing China to be more dependent on internal growth vs foreign investment at a time when their housing market is going bust and covid lockdowns froze their economy. It doesn't help that China has been uncertain about their position on the war and if there's an escalation no one wants to pour money into a country that could get hit with sanctions.
It isn't the end of the world, I'm just saying this lockdown is different. In 2020 China went into lockdowns as a strong economy, in 2022 they went into harsher lockdowns on richer regions with a weaker economy so I wouldn't expect the revenge spending to hit the same way as it did last time.