I think part of this fleeing to the west was bragging rights. "Hey, I am rich enough to afford to go". Another part was hot money. And of course the American Dream, that many find out to be not so rosy after all, not all the migrants from South America love it, but they do at least have more security and they believe a better future for their kids.

maybe they have an ambition to try voting!

@tigertiger

I agreed the part " for the kids", but from what I learned is, it s quit a difficult time for the rich to get used to the western lifestyle, especially to those in their mid-age. So some of them just choose to send their families abroad, or some of them prefer to change an ID and get back to China to continue to make money and enjoy the on call service which is hard for them to get in a western country.

@maemae, agree about the change of ID and coming back. This is understandable. I have a Chinese friend in UK whose family lost great wealth in 1949, and fled to HK. In 1997 they were getting skittish and starting to move core operations to the UK and maintaining a presence only in HK. If I had major assets now, I would not want to hold them in China. In fact I read last year that between 103tn USD had leaked/disapeared out of the Ch economy in the last 10 years or so.

@tigertiger, so back to the topic, it is actually not the wealthy who leave China but the Capital instead!

many financial experts advise to have multiple passports, offshore bank accounts, offshore real estate... for anyone with substantial assets.

@HFCAMPO
You forgot to mention my favorite - GMO (genetically modified foods - thank you Monsanto). Wheat and "whole grains" that have near zero nutritional value, so the producers add chemicals (bleach, coloring) and artificial vitamins and nutrients (more chemicals) to bring the food back into alignment with alleged nutritional values. Most US GMO foods are banned in Europe (beef, poultry, pork, grains) because they're so pumped up with chemicals - and we wonder why the USA leads in "lifestyle" diseases, such as cancers where there is no history of cancer, birth defects, and generally mentally unbalanced society (not to mention dumber) and our all-time favorite - obesity and related illnesses, such as diabetes, heart diseases, kidneys, livers, allergies, skin ailments, drug resistant strains of viruses and bacteria, mad cows, etc ad infinitum.

US GMO foods are designed to increase CONSUMPTION, NOT NUTRITION - profit over social responsibility.

Chinese may suffer from "grass is greener" syndrome - but they're generally in for a BIG surprise when they discover the USA is just a less populated version of China with different names for the same things.

And my all-time favorite thing about living in the USA - can't figure out how to do my taxes, without using software programs, because they're so complicated. The poor in the USA are penalized heavily because they don't know how to file tax returns to rightfully and legally get their due tax refunds - now that's taxation without representation! But it's sort of ok I suppose, as we use all that money the government takes from us to give to foreign countries (Saipan, Afghanistan, Iraq, formerly Iran, Philippines, Japan, to name a few) - while we little people must pay for our healthcare, diminishing retirement benefits (as opposed to increasing to keep pace with inflation and cost of living adjustments).

And don't even get me started on welfare abuse (the political abuse of trying to keep voters on welfare, so they'll vote for continued entitlement programs), unsustainable retirement programs (buy now - whack the next generation BIG time later), etc etc etc ad infinitum, ludicrous criminal legal system, etc etc ad infinitum...but I suppose that's the joy of expanding one's experiences; and need I mention COMCAST's chronically abysmal customer service - thanks to price and service fixing by the cable tv giants.

For new Chinese property owners - one of their biggest shocks are the property taxes (roughly 1-2% per year - 3% and above for communities with lots of forced bonds for schools, roads, and of course - welfare programs, etc.

Parents are arrested and charged with "unsubstantiated child abuse" for letting their kids walk home from school or the neighborhood park (because of the prevalence of predatory child molesters).

Believe it or not - I think China is generally a safer place to raise children than most urban cities...and even poor performing kids at school here are generally considered talented in the USA - because our schools dumb down our kids.

And of course - one of my favorite pet peeves - US citizens must pay USD 110 to USD 135 to renew our passports - while we GIVE billions of taxpayer money away to corrupt foreign countries, because there's no budget for US citizen services for US citizens...cuz we gave that part of the budget away to foreign governments (who, incidentally hate us and want us to perish, AFTER we arm and train them to be REALLY effective terrorists).

We're truly a nation steaming towards a Darwin Award Emeritus! Ugh...what a rant...

@ HFCAMPO & laotou

I think crimes, drugs and all those " social unrest phenomena", so as called, exist in every country. However, the rich won't randomly choose to stay outside of China. To be honest, who would like to leave his own country when he is rich and safe and stable and happy at home?

One would choose to move out of China, in my point of view, would based on serious thinking and comparison. Maybe he would feeling safer staying outside of China since he's rich enough to hire bodyguards or sending their kids to a better private school instead of a shitty messy one.

I don't deny that China's getting more open to the world, however, China needs to be more transparent on a lot more things. At least you guys know that there are so many guns in the US, but to me, I have no concept how many in China.

@maemae8
While bodyguards are sensationalized and romanticized in the media - they're actually more like jailers, reminding the wealthy of their vulnerability to ... well - whomever.

That's not quality of life - living in walled off communities, a bevy of bodyguards following all the family members around. A gilded cage is still just a cage.

As for private schools for the privileged - those kids have serious reality issues, as they live in isolated communities with isolated classmates - learning serious value issues that come with ludicrous wealth and the lack of compassion that comes with not meeting and socializing with we "normal" people.

Of course, in the situation today, anyone who has the big money to leave China, would likely ponder on that, and many do make the choice to do that too. Its so damn obvious. Maybe some of you even wonder why this takes place.