Passports for sale: why rich Chinese are the new super immigrants
In a world far removed from traditional ideas of immigration, globalisation has created a new class of citizen, one that is able to change nationality by opening a wallet
Think of people movement and immigration and more likely than not the picture that forms in your mind will be one of huddled, dispossessed masses cast adrift in rudimentary boats.
Yet as uncertainty, conflict and disparity grip the globe in a way that has not been seen in decades, a parallel and very different form of people movement is undergoing a renaissance.
It, too, is a product of globalisation, but one which allows the already possessed to buy a second or third nationality quickly and easily, providing them a comfortable bolthole in a fractious world and affording them the ability to flit easily around the planet in pursuit of business and financial opportunities.
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The schemes allowing such movement are referred to by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as Economic Citizenship Programmes (ECPs), though similar arrangements are sometimes called Citizenship by Investment or Immigrant Investment programmes.
Whatever name is used, the rise of China and the unravelling of the old, neoliberal global order has ensured that high-net-worth Chinese nationals are in the vanguard of the elite and rarefied flipside to the mass immigration problem most often presented in the world’s media.
An IMF paper published in May 2015 said of the phenomenon: “[ECPs] have recently been proliferating, with large and potentially volatile inflows of investment and fiscal revenues generating significant benefits for small economies, but also posing substantial challenges.”
