In recent days, the media has given flashy prominence to a story about top political figures in China stashing great sums offshore — the list of culprits going back many years to Deng Hsiao-ping. We are told this is corrupt and evil, so we are to be shocked and outraged, when we are told repeatedly that ordinary Chinese workers only make $30 a month.
This is black propaganda, to balance recent news that China has now surpassed America industrially. Also, it isn’t really news.
As we pointed out in our book LORDS OF THE RIM, Chinese who had money — the rich and the middle class — have been stashing it offshore for upwards of a thousand years, to keep emperors from seizing it. So nothing's new about this recent propaganda blast, except the attempt to blacken the names of current top Chinese leaders. They, or their relatives, always stashed hoards offshore. Which is how they came to control The Philippines, Taiwan, much of Indo-China, most of Siam, and large parts of what is now Indonesia and Malaysia. From these hoards emerged today's giant companies, banks, and oligarchs of the Pacific Rim, including some of the biggest Asian multinationals.
Years ago, western economists estimated that the “offshore Chinese” controlled some two-trillion dollars. After Mao’s death and Deng’s declaration that “getting rich is good”, the overseas wealth began moving back to Mainland China, apprehensively at first, then in a great rush that has produced China’s current Renaissance.
Western oligarchs do precisely the same thing. Switzerland’s private banks exist just to serve them. Members of the Bilderberg Group often choose to stash their hoards in the tax free Dutch Antilles, because the Dutch and British royal families control Bilderberg, with a bit of help from the Rothschilds and Rockefellers.
Wealthy westerners also take advantage of being “perpetual tourists” — by having lavish residences in several countries, they can avoid staying so long in one country that they are subject to that nation's taxes. Yet they still protest any move to increase taxes for people above a certain income level.
The day is not far off when Singapore will take over the dominance of the City of London. Unlike Shanghai or Hong Kong, Singapore is totally free to do whatever it wants, offshore.
