Chinese spent billions on US, other 'golden visas'

More than 100,000 Chinese have poured at least US$24 billion in the last decade into “golden visa” programmes across the world that offer residence in exchange for investment, an Associated Press analysis has found. Nowhere is Chinese demand greater than in the United States, which has taken in at least US$7.7 billion and issued more than 40 000 visas to Chinese investors and their families in the past decade, the AP found.

The Chinese investors flocking to these programmes are people like Jenny Liu, a doctoral student in the coastal city of Nanjing, who sold her apartment two years ago and moved in with her parents. She used the money from the sale to invest US$500,000 in a hotel project in the United States. If the project creates enough jobs in two years, she'll get a prized “green card” and a pathway for a less stressful ­education for her 9-year-old son.

“My son has a lot of homework to do every day, but I don't think he has learned a lot from school,” Liu said. “I hope he can actually pick up some useful knowledge or skills rather than only learn how to pass tests.”

The flood of investors reflects how China's rise has catapulted tens of millions of families into the middle class. But at the same time, it shows how these families are increasingly becoming restless as cities remain choked by smog, home prices multiply and schools impose ever-greater pressure on children. They also feel insecure about being able to protect their property and savings.

Their money goes toward government bonds, businesses, mountain ski resorts, new schools and real estate projects, including a Trump-branded tower in New Jersey built by the Kushner Companies, once run by Jared Kushner, now a White House senior adviser. But the industry is murky, loosely regulated and sometimes fraud-ridden - in the US, federal regulators have linked the EB-5 visa programme to fraud cases involving more than US$1 billion in investment in the last four years.

Despite criticism from Congress, Trump signed a spending bill that included a renewal of the programme through September, although federal authorities have proposed more than doubling the minimum investment. Just one day later, Kushner's sister, Nicole Meyer, was in Beijing courting Chinese for a new project funded by EB-5. That's raised complaints about conflicts of interest and new calls to revise or even end the programme.

“It is a growing industry and we do need more oversight,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an expert on the programme and a professor at Cornell Law School. “EB-5, when it is done properly, can and does benefit the economy.”



THE LURE OF A GOLDEN VISA

The number of Chinese using investment migration programmes worldwide tripled between 2010 and 2015, the AP found among the countries in its survey. In the last decade, Chinese have taken 75% of the investor visas issued by the United States, 70% for Portugal and 85 percent for Australia. China also remains the top recipient of investor visas in Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Spain, Hungary and Malta.

To be sure, those migrating make up only a small fraction of the around 18 million households that could be considered upper-middle-class or wealthier in China, but they echo the laments of many better-­educated, urban Chinese.

“Middle-class investors' choosing to leave shows that their confidence in their future, their dreams and the regime in China is fading,” said Zhang Lifan, an independent political scholar in Beijing.

China's “golden visa” investors are part of a wave characterized not by poverty, persecution or war, but by people with steady jobs and homes who are pursuing happiness that's eluded them in their homeland.

After decades of economic mismanagement and political upheaval, the ruling Communist Party reversed some of its most destructive policies and unleashed a four-decade-long economic boom in the 1970s. That growth lifted 500 million people out of poverty and vaulted generations of Chinese from peasantry into relatively well-paying manufacturing or service jobs. More than 3 million households in China now have an income of more than US$34 000 a year, according to the consultancy ­McKinsey & Company.

Key to their spending power is China's real estate boom. Real estate prices in China's largest cities have more than tripled in the last decade, with prices in Beijing rising by an average of 25% a year during that time. Since late 2015 alone, Beijing's home prices have jumped 63%, making a 1,300 square-foot (120 square-­meter) apartment worth more than US$1 million.

A family that gained ownership of an ordinary apartment more than a decade ago can now sell it for the price of a “golden visa.” And as their dissatisfaction with China's problems grows, more families are choosing to do so.

Like Liu, many of about a dozen investors or prospective investors interviewed by the AP say they don't want their children to struggle in China's rigid and intensely competitive education system, which emphasizes rote learning and can stifle creativity.

Cherry Deng, the mother of a 10-year-old boy in Sichuan province, invested in a port construction project in North Carolina through the US EB-5 program. Deng, who used funds from her car dealership business, said she wants her son to learn from the American emphasis on self-reliance. Deng said she sees Chinese parents supporting their children even after they've graduated from college - securing for them homes, jobs and, sometimes, even spouses.

“I don't want to take care of my children forever,' Deng said. “I want them to learn how to live independently and to create wealth on their own.” - Nampa/AP