China's Growing Purchasing Power

Much has been made in the news here in Portugal that Chinese have been snapping up property at the most expensive and central locations in the capital. Yet this has been happening pretty much all around in the world. Notice the problems in Hong Kong. Mainland Chinese demand for property there made housing costs climb tremendously. In response the local government changed  their laws to require houses to be inhabited for a minimum amount of time.

This is not restricted to the Chinese. Many affluent citizens of other nations have been buying property as well as trying to gain citizenship elsewhere for quite some time now.

Many Chinese are now attempting to invest outside of China and it is fairly common to see Chinese tourists in European cities, as we used to see Japanese and Korean tourists years before, as personal income increases.