Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
investors, is multiplied by the number of principal applicants (i.e. households)
landing in BC as entrepreneurs or investors in the ten-year period from 1988,
the year of the Expo land sale, to 1997, the year of Hong Kong's repatriation
to China, after which Hong Kong business arrivals in particular dropped sub-
stantially. The calculation leads to a total exceeding $30 billion for both immi-
grant streams over the decade from all countries. This data set covers the
whole province, but as 90 percent of business immigrants make Vancouver
their home, we can estimate that some $27 billion in 'total funds' is repre-
sented by business immigrants settling in Vancouver from 1988 to 1997. An
addition of approximately 25 percent should be made for secondary migrants
who re-located to Vancouver after landing in another province, plus an
unknown amount for the wealthy self-employed stream.
The grand total is most likely in the $35-$40 billion range at least in
total liquid funds available to business immigrants entering Greater
Vancouver over the decade. 8 Stories going around Vancouver in the 1990s
of a thousand millionaires holding accounts at a single Chinatown bank
branch may not have been as mythical as they sounded. The Chinatown
branch of HSBC opened in 1983, and in 1992 provided a private banking
centre for clients investing at least $250,000. During the first three weeks
of operation 50 millionaires opened personal accounts through the centre
(Day 1992). One report even identified half the 20,000 clients at the
Chinatown HSBC branch as multi-millionaires by 1994, with average
deposits of $3 million (Le Corre 1994). Bank wire transfers from Hong
Kong to personal accounts in British Columbia are estimated at $505 mil-
lion in the 1995-96 fiscal year (Li 1998: 139). 9 For one of the banks for
which more detailed statistics were available, the average transfer from
Hong Kong (there were 2,400 of them that year) to personal accounts in
British Columbia amounted to over $90,000. The scale of such activity
represents a spectacular avalanche of potential investment, and a colossal
success for the Pacific Rim policy so transparently visible in the Team
Canada trade and investment missions.
Of course non-liquid assets, for example ongoing commercial holdings in
East Asia, would add to the 'total funds' of immigrant households. The
furore that arose in the 1995-98 period when the Canadian state sought
information on such 'global assets' for taxation disclosure pointed to the
widespread existence of these additional investments outside Canada.
Institutional Facilitators
So far we have only considered embodied capital, the funds borne or
available to the highly prized business immigrants. But this by no means
exhausts the movement of capital between Canada and East Asia for other
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