More rich leave China in 2016 - Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert Hoogewerf

The trend of China´s rich planning migration to other countries has increased to 60 percent in 2016, according to the latest report by the Hurun Rich list. A weaker currency and fear for a collapsing domestic real estate market are the main reasons, Hurun founder Rupert Hoogewerf tells in the South China Morning Post. The US topped the list, followed by Britain, Canada, Australia and Singapore. 

The South China Morning Post:

About 56 per cent of China’s richest people said they were worried about the continuing depreciation of the yuan, which has fallen about 10 per cent against the US dollar since last summer, according to the “Immigration and the Chinese High-Net-Worth Individuals 2016”, an annual report compiled jointly by the Hurun Reportmagazine and Visas Consulting, and released on Friday. 

The survey was compiled following conversations with 240 wealthy people with average net assets of 27 million yuan between August to October. These people have either emigrated or are planning to do so. 

Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Report, said: “A weakening yuan and concerns about a possible property bubble bust in China’s first-tier cities have made China’s high-net-worth individuals consider overseas investment more seriously.” 

In the five years since 2011, housing prices have soared 205 per cent in Shenzhen and 94 per cent in Shanghai, according to Bloomberg data – far outpacing other cities that had also recorded property price rises, including San Francisco, London and Los Angeles.

There are an estimated 1.34 million rich Chinese with wealth worth 10 million yuan or more. “Sixty per cent of them – 800,000 people – are likely to invest in properties overseas in the coming years,” Hoogewerf said. 

In their choice of emigration and investment destination, the US topped the list, followed by Britain, Canada, Australia and Singapore.

More in the South China Morning Post.

Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you looking for more experts on China´s outbound investments? Do check out this list. 

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The Haphazard Empire - Howard French

+Howard French 

Author and journalist Howard French discusses his book China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa, at the Sinica Podcast with Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn. He explains why the original title The Haphazard Empire, covers his book better: the unplanned migration of over a million of Chinese to Africa.

You can hear the full podcast here.

Howard French and Kaiser Kuo are both speakers at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need one of them at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.

Are you interested in more experts on China´s outbound investments? Do check our latest list here.
 

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What Chinese are coming to Africa? - Howard French

+Howard French 

Author Howard French focuses in this latest book China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa on individual Chinese entering Africa. In OZY he explains why: Its not the billionaires, but the relative poor coming to Africa.

OZY:

French: This is the beginning of a historically important phenomenon: The creation of a massive diaspora of a trading and investment class of people of Chinese extraction. If you think about the economic history of the world in the last 500 years, big trading and investment diasporas — wherever they may be from — tend to have a huge impact on the subsequent political-socioeconomic [climate] of their destination countries... 

OZY: Is there something different about the Chinese people who decide to come? 

French: They come from very ordinary places in China, where cosmopolitanism is not their experience. To get out to Africa — which is psychologically as remote a place as you can get — means almost by definition you’re already dealing with a very special group of people. These Chinese people, whether or not they knew what they were getting into (and usually they didn’t), had a very special kind of pluck about them, a very special willingness to get out of the mainstream of their own society and to search and explore the world, to take some risks. 

OZY: So they come to Africa to escape something back at home? 

French: We have this image of China getting rich, the number of billionaires. China is in fact a really tough place for most Chinese people. So it’s not such a stretch to imagine why 1 percent or 3 percent of the people of that country would say, “Hey, there’s got to be some better way. There’s got to be some place where things aren’t so tough or where there’s more readily available opportunity for me.”

More in OZY.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.

Are you a media representative and do you want to talk to one of our speakers? Do drop us a line.  

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