Xia Yunchen, the 70-year-old relative of two of the more than 400 people killed in this week’s sinking of a cruise ship on the Yangtze River, put her finger deftly on why wealthy Chinese are spiriting their money out of the country as fast and furiously as they can.

The latest figures from the People’s Bank of China indicate that wealthy Chinese, who usually have close family or business links to the ruling Communist Party, will illegally slip $320 billion out of the country this year. This is a considerable increase over the annual flight of about $250 billion in the past few years.

Canada is a favourite destination for this money, along with the United States, Australia, Europe and other Asian countries, such as Singapore, with reliable banking systems and the rule of law. But unlike other jurisdictions, Canada has paid little serious attention to how much money is getting here, how it is being slipped out of China and into Canada, and what effects it’s having here. There is a good deal of suspicion that the Chinese billions are grossly inflating housing prices in Vancouver and Toronto. However, as no level of government collects adequate data, it’s impossible to tell if this is true or not.

There are some indications, though, that in the last couple of years various Canadian law enforcement and other agencies concerned with the flow of potentially illegal money are taking notice of the situation. The agencies are beginning to share information and co-ordinate discussions about the dangers of these money flows and what they need to know to assess them.

There may be many reasons why China’s moneyed elite is exporting its assets. But this massive exodus suggests that the people at the top of China’s one-party, authoritarian regime have little faith in its longevity. They see some kind of serious economic and political upheaval coming.

The gap between China’s wealthy — known as the “Red Nobility” — and ordinary Chinese has been growing ever since the Communist Party abandoned the Marxist central planned economy 35 years ago and adopted a brand of market authoritarianism. But in recent years the relationship has become more and more violent and unstable as citizens clamour to have their complaints addressed by the increasingly distant ruling aristocracy.

In this mounting hubbub of discontent, the outburst by the distraught Xia Yunchen earlier today was relatively minor, but telling nonetheless.

China has seen almost 500 serious outbreaks of unrest every day for years. In Canadian terms, that would translate to 13 major riots across Canada every day. China has seen almost 500 serious outbreaks of unrest every day for years. In Canadian terms, that would translate to 13 major riots across Canada every day.

Angered to distraction over the lack of information being given relatives about the fate of their loved ones, Xia burst into a news conference being held by officials at Jianli, the centre for the recovery operation.

“Is it necessary to treat the common people, one by one, as if you are facing some kind of formidable foe?” shouted Xia, whose sister and brother-in-law were on the ill-fated Eastern Star river steamer.

She was quite right. All too often when something untoward happens to Chinese — the disappearance last year of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 with 227 passengers, many of them Chinese, for example — the instinct of the authorities is to treat the relatives as a potential problem. The result, though, is that Chinese have come to believe that in order to get their grievances heard they have to shout louder, demonstrate in great numbers and even act more violently than others clamouring for the attention of officialdom.

Late last month dozens of people were injured — including dozens of police — and many others were detained when tens of thousands of people in Linshui, a town in south-western Sichuan, took to the streets. The protesters were demanding that a new railway line linking Dazhou city with the provincial commercial centre, Chongqing, pass through their city rather than the neighbouring city of Guangan. The Linshui demonstrators believe the railroad route is politically-inspired and is going through Guangan because the city is the hometown of former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

As these things go in China today, the Linshui railway protest was a fairly minor affair. According to logs kept by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the main think tank advising the Communist Party government, there have been about 180,000 “mass incidents” annually for many years.

A “mass incident” is defined as a protest involving at least 1,000 people and which is so violent or threatening that it requires deployment of the riots squads or the People’s Armed Police.

That’s almost 500 serious outbreaks of unrest every day across China. In Canadian terms, that would translate to 13 major riots across Canada every day. No wonder China’s wealthy and their Communist Party relatives and colleagues look at the future with foreboding.

Since he came to power at the end of 2012, China’s new president and Communist Party boss Xi Jinping has stepped up repression, censorship and the suppression of dissent in an effort to keep a lid on unrest. A constant effort by Beijing since the 1989 student uprising, which started in the capital’s Tiananmen Square and spread throughout the country, has been to prevent the emergence of any nation-wide opposition organization that can become a rallying point for dissent.

That tactic has been largely successful, but, in part because of the way social media can be used for crowd-gathering, the Communist Party is facing instead a constant barrage of local brushfires.

The most common gripe that brings people out on to the streets is the theft of land by local government and party officials to sell to real estate developers for bribes and profits. But an increasing cause of social unrest is the poisonous state of China’s environment. Recent government studies show that 700 million Chinese – over half the population – drink water that is contaminated with human or animal waste. Seventy-five per cent of rivers flowing through China’s cities are too polluted for drinking or fishing, and 30 per cent of all river water throughout the country is too polluted to be used even for agriculture or industry. The air pollution story is similar, if not worse.

For the last couple of decades the vibrancy of the Chinese economy has smothered the underlying unrest. But the economy has now stalled and many analysts believe it cannot be re-ignited without serious structural and political reforms. These, however, would undermine the authority of the Communist Party. President Xi has made it clear on many occasions that his prime purpose and unshakeable resolve is to maintain the party’s dominance over the one-party state.

Xi is a much more assertive and commanding character than his immediate predecessors. However, while authoritarian states often look solid and unassailable, they are always brittle. One tap with a stick at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and they shatter.

Just look at Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria in the Arab Spring, and, of course, the collapse of the Soviet Union starting in 1989.

Small wonder, then, that wealthy Chinese think it would be wise to find safe havens abroad for their assets.

Jonathan Manthorpe is the author of “Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan,” published by Palgrave-Macmillan. He has been a foreign correspondent and international affairs columnist for nearly 40 years. He was European bureau chief for the Toronto Star and then Southam News in the late 1970s and the 1980s. In 1989 he was appointed Africa correspondent by Southam News and in 1993 was posted to Hong Kong to cover Asia. For the last few years he has been based in Vancouver, writing international affairs columns for what is now the Postmedia Group. He left the group last year and now writes for a range of newspapers and websites. [email protected]

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