Had a lovely WeChat conversation with my 96 year old revolutionary grandfather a couple days ago and at one point he hit me with the “You should buy property over there to rent out, it’s very lucrative, and you should take the 老外’s money and spend it in China”
I actually had no idea how to respond to this financial advice. Like at face value, the housing market is a bubble and could collapse at any moment, and also I’m not sure how moral being a parasite would be even if you’re leeching off of the benefactors of colonialism and western hegemony.
For some perspective, I’m kind of doing the reverse of this. I have a retirement account from a prior job with some money in it. I’ve plowed every dollar in there into Chinese SOEs (Americans actually can buy stocks in a few SOE via ADRs) and some other Chinese index funds. My thought is I can’t lose. If the state decides to appropriate my investments, that means President Xi has pushed the communism button and I am more that happy to offer my humble IRA for the greater good. If he doesn’t push the button then those stocks will surely go up just from this being the Chinese century and all.
If you buy a house in the US and the price drops massively, that probably means the US empire is collapsing which is a win for everyone. If not then you’ll make some money off us. Win-win.
(This is joke advice, just from an investment standpoint I don’t think buying a house in the US is a good idea right now).
Should clarify, I live in Australia.