When Candice Meng, a real estate developer from Guangzhou in southern China, heard about US President Donald Trump’s proposal for a new “gold card” offering permanent residency to the super-rich, she was initially intrigued.
The requirement to invest at least US$5 million in the United States to qualify for the scheme seemed reasonable: the price tag is actually far higher for similar golden visa programmes in other countries, she pointed out.
“It’s not expensive in terms of cost-effectiveness – it’s at least 100 million yuan (US$13.9 million) for Singapore and over 60 million yuan for New Zealand,” Meng said.
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But Meng, who owns hundreds of millions of yuan worth of assets, eventually decided against applying for US residency. With the US-China trade war and relatively high urban crime levels, America just did not feel like a good place to be right now, she said.
Meng is far from alone. Three months after he first floated the idea, Trump’s gold card scheme appears to have fallen flat with China’s wealthy, who were expected to be one of the biggest sources of demand for the controversial new visa.
China has experienced a significant outflow of millionaires in recent years amid an economic slowdown, and wealthy Chinese make up roughly 70 per cent of global applicants for the US’ existing EB-5 visa for foreign investors – the programme that the gold card would replace – according to US government data.
But many in China have deep concerns about the new gold card and whether Trump can deliver on his promises. There is also widespread unease about the situation in America more generally – from crime to a perceived rise in hostility towards Chinese migrants during a period of simmering US-China tensions.
When Trump announced the scheme in late February, he pledged that anyone paying the required US$5 million for a gold card would receive the same entitlements as a green card holder, including the rights to work and live permanently in the US, as well as “a route to citizenship”.
The idea is to attract more of the global super-rich to settle in the US by creating a faster and simpler alternative to the EB-5. That earlier programme, introduced in 1990, forces applicants to jump through several hoops to gain a green card, including investing US$1.05 million in US companies and creating 10 permanent full-time jobs.
Earlier this month, Elon Musk, the billionaire tech CEO and senior adviser to the US president, said in a tweet that the gold card was undergoing “a quiet trial” and would be rolled out to the public soon. On Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said a gold card website would launch within a week.
Yet, key details about the new policy remain unclear. Legal experts question whether Trump has the authority to launch such a programme through executive actions. Any creation of a new visa, or the cancellation or alteration of the EB-5 visa, would require going through Congress, they say.
“To establish the gold card programme within the Immigration and Nationality Act, Congress would have to pass, and the president sign into law, appropriate amendments,” wrote George Fishman, senior legal fellow at non-profit research organisation Center for Immigration Studies, in an article last month.
These uncertainties weigh heavily with many wealthy Chinese. Jack Jing, general manager of the Beijing-based migration service provider WellTrend, said some of his clients had inquired about the gold card, but had become cautious after learning about the ambiguities surrounding the programme.
“There’s rigid demand among some clients, such as those whose children are aiming for an Ivy League medical school,” he said, as most medical schools in the US only accept applications from US citizens and permanent residents.
While many in China liked the sound of the gold card – especially Trump’s promise of a short processing time – the scheme was unlikely to lure many of China’s super-rich due to the risks associated with it, including the possibility that it would not be backed by proper legislation, Jing said.
Meng, the developer from Guangzhou, had originally wanted to acquire a US green card because it offered enhanced wealth protection, business opportunities, and education resources for her children.
But the current tensions between the US and China have dampened Meng’s interest in migrating to the US.
“The trade war has increased the cost of sending children to study there, visas are harder to obtain than before, and the job prospects for staying in the US after graduation are not optimistic,” she said.
She is also worried about public safety in the US, citing an increase in anti-Asian violence and racism during the pandemic and Trump’s tough anti-immigration stance.
“My husband and I have watched a lot of news and we think public safety in the US is poor – with gun shootings everywhere and homeless people all over the streets,” Meng said.
Another major issue putting off Chinese billionaires from moving to America is the US’ policy of taxing citizens and permanent residents on their worldwide income, according to Cathy Qian, a lawyer at the Shanghai-headquartered law firm Hiways who runs the company’s private wealth management centre.
“The biggest concerns over the US are global taxation and its unclear attitude towards Chinese people,” she said.
In February, Trump promised that gold card holders “won’t have to pay any tax on income outside of the US”, though it remains unclear how he plans to implement such a change to the tax code.
Given these disadvantages, rich Chinese seeking to move abroad have increasingly been looking beyond the US in recent years, with Canada, Singapore and Japan among the most popular destinations.
China still has the largest outflow of millionaires of any country in the world, according to a report by international migration advisory firm Henley & Partners published last year.
An estimated 15,200 Chinese people with at least US$1 million of investible assets transferred their wealth and moved overseas last year, a record total, the report said.
But the number of Chinese nationals securing EB-5 visas in the US actually declined slightly over the past decade, although China remains the dominant source of applicants for the programme.
While more than 9,000 Chinese investors obtained the visa in 2014, the figure plummeted to a pandemic-era low of about 1,500 before rebounding to over 6,000 in 2023. Last year, 8,311 EB-5 visas were granted to Chinese applicants, accounting for 69 per cent of the global total, according to the US State Department.
Qian, the wealth management expert, said many of her Chinese clients were interested in moving to Singapore, as they considered it safer and friendlier to Chinese nationals than the US.
At the same time, successful businesspeople in eastern China are hesitant about seeking foreign residency during a period of heightened global economic uncertainty, according to Jin Xin, a researcher with the Bluesource Family Wealth Management Institute in Ningbo, Zhejiang province.
People are more focused on how to transform their businesses to keep up with China’s rapidly changing economy and pass on their wealth to the next generation, he said.
There are about 110,000 mainland Chinese families with over 100 million yuan in total assets, among which 66,000 have at least 100 million yuan in investible assets, according to the Hurun Wealth Report 2024 published in February.
And with many of China’s first generation of entrepreneurs approaching retirement, the country is on the cusp of a huge wave of asset transfers. An estimated 20 trillion of yuan of wealth is expected to be handed down within the next 10 years, the report said.
Instead of spending US$5 million to obtain a US gold card, a local business owner told the Post he would rather invest that sum in a range of projects at home to diversify his asset portfolio.
The man, who declined to be named due to privacy concerns, runs a family business that manufactures goods for the overseas market, with one-third of the company’s sales coming from the US until the tariff war erupted in early April.
Now, the risk of a wider US-China decoupling has made him wary of moving to America or letting his children live there any time soon, he said.
“Few of my high-net-worth friends are considering migrating to America, though some of them already have their children born in the US as they planned years ago,” the man said.
Though there is little interest in Trump’s gold cards, North America has remained the top destination for Chinese migrants in recent years, with education the primary driver, said Jing from WellTrend.
“The US has the most advanced technology and its Ivy League schools offer high-quality education, while Canada has relatively loose policies for business immigrants and is located near the US,” he said.
For some, a lack of confidence in Chinese policymaking is another factor influencing their decisions to apply for permanent residency in another country.
“Speaking for myself, I tend to have more trust in Western economic and financial systems – in the sense that at least my assets won’t arbitrarily be taken away,” said Lynn Shao, a 27-year-old therapist based in New York.
“However, I don’t think this is just about the US. I believe other Western countries also do a good job in this regard,” she added.
More from South China Morning Post:
- China defies Trump trade war challenge with US$17.3 billion in capital inflow
- Trump to sell US$5 million ‘gold card’ visas to rich foreigners
- Chinese graduates in UK face bleak prospects amid job crunch: ‘it’s devastating’
- China’s millionaires keep leaving, but now outflows may be ‘more damaging than usual’
- China’s wealthiest of the wealthy have a bigger share of the wealth pie, Hurun report says
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