Wealthy Chinese are pouring into Singapore

Mondo Social Updated on 2024-02-04

According to Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao statistics, among the 21,537 new citizens in Singapore in 2022, Asia accounts for 37%, of which there are more than 500 Chinese billionaires, and most of them come from Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other regions.

Li Xiting, founder of Mindray Medical, Li Xiaodong of Donghai Group, Daniel Zhang, founder of Haidilao, and even Jack Ma and other well-known rich people are among them, all signs show that the crazy immigration of Chinese rich to Singapore has long been overwhelming, so what is the magic of Singapore that attracts many Chinese rich people to come?

In the Forbes Global Billionaires list released in 2022, half of the top 10 richest people in Singapore are Chinese.

In 2019, Haidilao founder Daniel Zhang successfully replaced Singapore's richest man Huang Zhixiang with a value of US$13.8 billion, and was subsequently replaced by Li Xiaodong of Donghai Group with a value of US$21.1 billion in 2021.

Immediately after 2022, Li Xiting, director of Mindray Medical, became the richest man in Singapore with a net worth of $17.6 billion, and not long after Li Xiting defended his title, Peng Lei, a female Alibaba executive worth up to 40 billion, was also revealed to have immigrated to Singapore, and then Peng Lei's husband Sun Tongyu's 300 million mansion in Singapore was exposed.

Good guys, they all say that China's top richest people retired to the mountains and forests to enjoy their old age, but they never expected that they all emigrated to Singapore.

What's even more intriguing is some unknown mysterious rich people, in June 2022, a wealthy Chinese bought 20 luxury homes in Singapore at one time, with taxes alone as high as 30 million, and another rich man even threw 19.4 billion yuan, directly bought the entire floor of the second building of Suntec City.

According to statistics, as of the first half of 2022, the Monetary Authority of Singapore has received a total of 143 family office applications, including 63 in China alone, with an amount of up to 2.5 billion yuan.

Before August 2022, Chinese people bought as many as 932 private apartments in Singapore, and many buyers signed contracts without even looking at the house, and even more disdainful in the face of Singapore's stamp duty of up to 30%.

A Chinese tycoon who is not qualified to buy a house chooses to rent a house with a lot of money, and a Chinese tycoon rents a high-quality bungalow of more than 20,000 square feet in Queen's Garden, Holland Road, Singapore, with a rent of up to 1 million yuan per month.

The crazy move of the Chinese rich in Singapore has directly driven up the local house prices, hotel stays, license plates** and even nightclub consumption.

But even so, the number of wealthy Chinese immigrants to Singapore is still growing.

According to relevant authorities**, by 2030, Singapore's millionaires will account for 13 percent of Singapore's total population4%, which may surpass Australia to become the millionaire capital of the Asia-Pacific region.

There are two explanations for this, the first is tax, as a large tax haven country, not only there are few taxes here, the tax rate is low, but there is no wealth tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax.

The personal income tax is only 22% at the highest, and the corporate tax is as low as 17%, and there is no tax on personal dividends, which can be called a tax haven for the wealthy.

Secondly, Singapore, as a world-famous offshore financial center, not only has a good economic environment, but also an important haven for wealth.

Whether it is Indonesia** in the past, or natural disasters in Southeast Asia later, or even the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, as the international situation becomes more and more complicated, the first place for wealthy people from all over the world to immigrate is Singapore.

It is not enough for the rich to transfer assets, and more capitalists even choose to directly take a heavy position in Singapore, and Ali Group was revealed this year that it will build a 305-meter-high skyscraper in Singapore, with a valuation of more than 8.4 billion yuan.

ByteDance and Tencent have also been rumored to make a large investment in Singapore, and iQiyi will directly settle its global headquarters in Singapore.

30 years ago, everyone sang all the way under the slogan of getting rich first and driving the rich later, why is it not the case 30 years later.

In 2022, it can be said that no one is having a good time, in the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the world energy crisis, and the increasingly serious inflation, not only China, but even the West, Europe and the United States and many other countries are also facing the same dilemma, but Singapore, on the other hand, seems to be completely different.

Warren Buffett once said: No one can make money by shorting their homeland.

Compared with the capitalist society, due to the perennial accumulation of capital experience, many rich people have the illusion that capital can protect wealth, so a large number of rich entrepreneurs began to flee one after another, so is this choice really correct?

There is no denial of this, but it is a miscalculation to use Singapore as a safe haven, and the Strait of Malacca, which Singapore holds, is an important node connecting the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the Americas, accounting for almost 25% of the world's maritime **, but the actual control is the United States.

Singapore, as a pawn of the United States, is not destined to be a long-term peaceful holy land, which Singapore naturally knows, so since this year, the country has also increased taxes, and intends to restart taxes such as capital gains tax, which makes the fleeing rich very uncomfortable, and it is difficult to escape the fate of being harvested back and forth.

Although on the surface, this is only a game between capital and capital, its essence may evolve into a major change in globalization, and even affect the entire Asian economic and financial landscape.

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