I just asked Paul, and he says it'll be about two more weeks to complete the renovation and reopen. I'll remind him to announce it here when he does.

To clarify, it's 1 million USD (as an investment, not a payment) in general, and 500,000 USD in specifically designated "economically distressed zones."

One of you called it legalized graft, and I'm not sure what exactly you meant by that, but this program is actually a source of a huge amount of graft and other misdeeds, mostly at the expense of these Chinese millionaires. A large chunk of the projects seeking investment under the green card scheme turn out to be massive frauds that will never make money. The Feds have been busting them left and right in recent years.

For any foreign prospective homebuyers who come to this thread looking for info, note that several international banks, such as HSBC, provide mortgage services to foreigners in China, up to 70% the assessed value of the house (not the sale price)

Questions of whether it's smart to buy a house in China aside, it almost always makes financial sense to finance, rather than put all your money in a house. Here are a few reasons, some China specific:

- If you're worried about property rights and capital controls, you're better off keeping that main nest egg offshore.

- With smart, diversified investments, you can almost always make more money than the lender charges in interest.

You guys are missing the point. He seems to want to know what it costs Chinese to borrow money.

Anyway, the information is readily available if you are able to search in Chinese. Search for [Name of Bank]贷款利率

I just checked CMB (www.cmbchina.com/cmbwebpubinfo/cdrate.aspx?chnl=cdrate), which has rates from 4.85%-5.4% depending on the term of the loan. They also have a loan calculator: www.cmbchina.com/CmbWebPubInfo/Cal_Loan_Per.aspx

Bank of China (www.bankofchina.com/fimarkets/lilv/) seems to have the same rates.

You can do the rest on your own with my search formula above.

While there do seem to be people who collect resumes for various reasons, and recruiting firms that are overly secretive, there's another thing that happens a lot around here, which is poor communication.

I was accused once of running a resume farm. A friend of a friend had just opened a large resort complex, and was looking for a good foreign chef. I put up ads on several expat sites around the country, and the queries started rolling in. I went back to the friend to ask about details such as salary, duration, name of company, etc (all of which I would have been happy to give), and never got an answer. Apparently the boss got caught up in some other stuff, and ended up finding his chef through some other route.