Canada as a Magnet for Investment: The Chinese Example
The Canadian story is a story of individuals from every corner of the world and of every culture who took the life-changing decision to come to Canada. Among them is China.
China’s economic Great Leap Forward stands as one of the defining images of the closing moments of the 20th century. Now an economic powerhouse, China, and its $3.3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves are viewed by some with fear and trepidation. Others see it as an immense opportunity to create a more widely shared prosperity, bring peoples closer together and remove the barriers in the way of understanding and peace.
Tina Mak is one of those. A star real estate broker and consultant in Vancouver, Mak, was born in Hong Kong and educated in England. She speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin and is now a Canadian citizen. She hosts a weekly radio program geared to educating a predominantly Chinese audience about the do’s and don’ts of real estate investing. Mak is also the founding president of the Vancouver chapter, the first outside the United States, of the Asian Real Estate Association of America (AREAA) . This relatively new real estate industry organization was created to bridge the knowledge and culture gap between Asia and North America.
The exponential growth of the Chinese economy and the rise of the middle class in China is an entirely new factor. Armed with savings and disposable income, an increasing number of Chinese has entered the Canadian real estate market. Some families are looking for a safe-haven for their life savings. Others seek a place to raise their families, study, and even retire. Canada is a highly favored destination for investors, including many from China. The stability of the political and investment climate, relatively low prices, and attractive location compared to other key markets, makes Canada a very powerful magnet for immigrants.
Of those making Canada a preferred destination, investors from China, India and Iran have flocked to British Columbia and the greater Vancouver region. For example, over 25 per cent of residents in Greater Vancouver — Canada’s third largest metropolitan region after Toronto and Montreal — speak Chinese as a first language.
Mainland Chinese, now cash rich, are actively searching for new places to deploy their capital. Emerging economies are growing, fueled by a new educated and sophisticated new middle class. This newly prosperous class are aggressively seeking out investments in Canada, which like real estate, also includes manufacturing, technology, services, and as incubators for their entrepreneurial aspirations. So while the global economy adjusts and expands to this new normal, within it rests uncertainty, and for entrepreneur’s magnificent promise to be seized. And people like Tina Mak and the hundreds of thousands like her also highlight another powerful reality: Canada is far from “full” for smart, ambitious, and hardworking people. Quite the contrary. Canada is open and in need of a lot more of them.
