Personally, I won't doing business in China. I did look into buying property there a few years ago, and it seemed impossible. I don't know why we let rich foreigners buy our (U.S.) realestate with a phone call, and money. You don't even need to be a citizen of this country in order to buy an apartment building in San Francisco. All you need is money, and a few phone calls. I'm not picking on the Chinese, I would like to see the U.S. all foreign realestate ownership, unless we can buy reciprocally. Hell, if I were king, I would outlaw REIT's, and limit realestate holdings to maybe a handful per Social security number? I feel a home is more than an investment, and community ties matters.
Got off topic, but rent is on my mind, and I don't like this kind of realestate spculation that's going around me. I'm seeing too many people being kicked out of their communities, while homes sit empty.
There's a ton of links about corruption in China, here's the first one of many-
http://www.businessinsider.com/china-corruption-in-business-...
Also, many of those 5000 "foreigners" are actually the children of senior Chinese officials who have taken foreign citizenship then returned to China. The number of "real" foreigners with permanent residence is even lower.
Actually unlike in the US, it's very easy here. You register a wholly foreign owned company, get a visa connected to that, and you're sorted. Total cost can be as low as ~USD$30,000. Total time expenditure, perhaps 3 months these days. Of course, that will also require paying rent on a property, and thus you would typically spend a little more time scouting for a suitable location.