Original blog:https://blogs.ubc.ca/kenjiseng/
Article from – http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/business/in-suburban-seattle-new-nests-for-chinas-rich.html?ref=business&_r=0
It is an interesting article that really highlights the issue of many countries. The developing countries that host many millionaires/billionaires like India, Indonesia and Thailand that face social issues like traffic congestion, overcrowding, pollution and so on actually pressure those who are wealthy to immigrate to other countries.
Like China in this example, many of the wealthy tycoons are choosing to move and essentially spend their capital overseas. This reduces the economy of their local countries and actually improve the economy of their countries of destination.
Places like China face a problem where they need to continuously grow and develop but need to find a way to maintain the countries wealthy people. A good idea would be to simply create a desirable area to reside in within the country only for the wealthy but this sparks social injustices and could perhaps cause social tensions.
Kenji is right in saying that this type of immigration largely benefits the target destinations as rich Chinese people are purchasing expensive goods and services adding to the economy. Furthermore, creating established businesses in those new “homes”. But the more important issue that this raises is the loss of wealth associated with this move to the home country.
There might still be income derived from areas like remittance and the rich tycoons running their businesses from overseas however by losing this demographic of people will impact the economy in more ways than one. So, to conclude countries like China need to also consciously look to improve the quality of life if it wishes to maintain the higher-income cohort and improve things like local education systems to reduce the amount of talent lost to other countries. With migration and travel being so readily available in modern society it will prove to be quite a challenge to achieve this.