Chinese Money?

H once told me a rather interesting observation that occured during the Yanni concert in the Forbidden City in 1997. Considering the wages of senior civil servants of that time, it is quite incredulous for them to be able to afford not just to obtain the best seat for themselves, but for their entire families which included for several of them their young children.

The rise of the Chinese economy has indeed been quite incredible, but what lies behind much of these money is something I guess most people either choose to forget or would preferably like to ignore.

For example, in the property sector which many have made astronomical sums. Where do people find so much land to speculate when land was state owned? Why do you find many huge empty buildings in small cities? Does urban economic expansion really justifty the rate of which farm land has disappeared from the fringes of urban area?

I once knew several Chinese students in London, whose parents were merely local party secretaries in rich provinces, and who could easily afford luxuries which were far from their declared incomes. Yet, as once argued by several China experts, corruption may not have been neccessarily that bad for China.

The article about Morgan Stanley's former Asia chief economist Andy Xie rather caught my attention. Had a discussion with A' brother the other day about money laundering being a common feather of major financial centres, and seriously I doubt any global hub is totally free of such activities. Notwithstanding, surely what Andy Xie forgot to mention, is so where does HK's Chinese money come from? Smart as he is, he couldn't be that forgetful could he?