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Comment by tzm | Hacker News Reader

Fwiw, I live in Sunnyvale and have seen this exodus first hand on several occasions. In fact, just yesterday, a friend from Shanghai moved into a modest home in Sunnyvale for $1m. Her husband owns a string of dry cleaning centers in Shanghai and obtained an investor visa ($750k).

Last month I hosted a friend from Shanghai who owns a successful factory. He is actively scouting for real estate in the $1m - $2m range for his son. He considered the area "very cheap" compared to Shanghai prices.

I know of several other Chinese professionals that are in the process of relocating to the Bay area or have already purchased a home.

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It's a great way of laundering grey money earned through nefarious means within china (great word play, by the way). A lot of corrupt officials and business men skimming money that isn't there's using them to buy property in the states so they can escape china before getting caught (the USA and china don't have an extradition treaty).

Hi. I don't want to be pedantic, but you always make this mistake, and it just drives me nuts every time... " business men skimming money that isn't THEIRS using them to buy property"

"Their" indicates a person possessing something, as in "Their car was parked in the next street". "There" indicates a place, it's a bit like the opposite of "here", as in "put the blue shirts here, and the red shirts there"

Right, I make that mistake a lot. I correct it when I catch it though.

"very cheap" - There is no need for the quote. The real estate price in China, especially in Shanghai has been skyrocketing in the past decade. The average apartment price in the city is close to 10k USD(per square meter) now.

It is generally assumed that Bay area is more costly than most of China. Hence the quote. Of course, chinese people may know that it is otherwise....

I heard the average sale price of an apartment in China was $500K...that is for the whole country, including 2nd and 3rd tier cities. Now, I don't know how believable that is, but if true...wow...oh...wow...

He asked about the price of a property near Santa Clara, which was approx $900k. His response was, "oh that's very cheap". He was expecting about $1.5m. An interesting comment.

True, and they have been surging again after the chinese government eased monetary conditions after the financial crisis in 2009 (remember).

But to Xi Jinpings credit -and I do not think he is getting enough of it- he has pricked it.

For those not actively following china. There is a big difference between the central government (Xi Jinping) and provincial and local government. In that the central government has much less control than one would think or is used to in the West.

Chinese leadership is implementing a lot of new policies which can be summarized under 'improved quality of economic growth'. So we will see how that goes. But it should have an impact on emigration.

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