tl;dr Vancouver is undergoing wrenching changes due to unfathomable amounts of Chinese money. This is inflamed by British Columbia's surprisingly lax approach to financial transparency in foreign investment and liberal immigration laws. It has priced locals right out of the market, though recent changes in tax structure are cooling down real estate investment.
Article doesn't do a good job of covering "little thirds", mistresses who are settled there with an apartment and allowance, or of unaccompanied "college students" who spend way more time vlogging than studying. Anecdotally a shitload of people following those descriptions have been shipped in, an influx that has slowed drastically with real estate taxes meant to punish this behavior.
The city of Richmond just south of Vancouver is mentioned but its import is arguably understated by the article. It's a fascinating place, and Richomond's "night market" (sort of a combination fair midway/flea market) is an electric experience soon to be imported to Silicon Valley, where it will be a huge hit.
Westerners generally speaking have absolutely no clue about the importance of a stable currency, which implies a stable political system, a nation that respects rule of law, and a notion of property rights. This leaves only a few countries, namely the US, the UK, and a couple of Western European nations. Wealthy Chinese absolutely do, and they are scared out of their minds that the tyrannical regime there will separate them from their assets. These people remember the Cultural Revolution. So the West is the first resort for relatively safe storage of their often questionably-gotten cash. (More adventurous/volatile places to invest, like Africa, are riskier but often have a higher upside.)
Because I apparently hate good karma I will observe that we used to love going to Vancouver, especially the weeklong jazz festival, but we don't any longer. Like Seattle, the fun places to walk have largely been overrun by street people who use hard drugs and leave needles around. None appear to be Asian.
How exactly does that destabilize the currency or eliminate the right to private property? All countries that tax wealth or income reserve the right to investigate how much wealth and/or income you have and ask questions about where it came from, and reserve the right to punish you for not cooperating.
They also reserve the right to investigate crimes and compel cooperation with investigation.
From the primary source linked by that Wikipedia article:
A UWO requires a person who is reasonably suspected of involvement in, or of being connected to a person involved in, serious crime to explain the nature and extent of their interest in particular property, and to explain how the property was obtained, where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the respondent’s known lawfully obtained income would be insufficient to allow the respondent to obtain the property.
So if you're a known associate of, say, a mobster, and your income tax documents say you made £100k last year, but you suddenly had £2m cash to spend on a choice piece of real estate with no record of you taking out a mortgage or other loans, yeah, they're going to want you to explain where that money came from, and the law gives them the option to compel you to do so. This is how the rule of law is actually supposed to work!
I imagine it's like most money laundering laws where the circumstantial evidence that prompted the investigation is enough to convict if you don't provide a verifiable explanation.
Article doesn't do a good job of covering "little thirds", mistresses who are settled there with an apartment and allowance, or of unaccompanied "college students" who spend way more time vlogging than studying. Anecdotally a shitload of people following those descriptions have been shipped in, an influx that has slowed drastically with real estate taxes meant to punish this behavior.
The city of Richmond just south of Vancouver is mentioned but its import is arguably understated by the article. It's a fascinating place, and Richomond's "night market" (sort of a combination fair midway/flea market) is an electric experience soon to be imported to Silicon Valley, where it will be a huge hit.
Westerners generally speaking have absolutely no clue about the importance of a stable currency, which implies a stable political system, a nation that respects rule of law, and a notion of property rights. This leaves only a few countries, namely the US, the UK, and a couple of Western European nations. Wealthy Chinese absolutely do, and they are scared out of their minds that the tyrannical regime there will separate them from their assets. These people remember the Cultural Revolution. So the West is the first resort for relatively safe storage of their often questionably-gotten cash. (More adventurous/volatile places to invest, like Africa, are riskier but often have a higher upside.)
Because I apparently hate good karma I will observe that we used to love going to Vancouver, especially the weeklong jazz festival, but we don't any longer. Like Seattle, the fun places to walk have largely been overrun by street people who use hard drugs and leave needles around. None appear to be Asian.