18 of the world’s top 20 cities with highest surveillance are in China

Sometimes real estate agents in America are wondering why Chinese are a potential good source of buyers.  They are asking themselves why the should sell their listings to Chinese?

Most people know about the typical reasons why Chinese are looking to buy a house overseas.  These reasons are education, investment, more healthy enviornment (air, water and food), job prospects ("American Dream") and freedom of speech.

A new article published by South China Morning Post is giving a potential other reason why Chinese love to buy overseas real estate; they are being monitored all the time by the Chinese government in their home country. Beijng and Shanghai have each more than 1 million cameras installed to monitor the behaviour of their citizens. As a comparison, there are currently only about 3,000 surveillance cameras linked to NYPD in New York City!  Besides all the internet monitoring, the inability to access Facebook/Google and other western social media, it is not a surprise then that many Chinese citizens are keen to move overseas and buy a house in a foreign country.