> 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.
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.