Edit: to clarify, the Chinese yuan and hkd are pegged to the USD. The recent strength of the USD has caused problems for China ...some people thing the peg will fail. If you are one of these people and you have lots of cash in China, you want to move the money out of the country and into a different asset class. The recent weakness of the Canadian dollar has made parking money in Canada very reasonable via buying of property. As a poor Canadian who owns no property, I'm pretty much outpriced of the real estate market in the city where I was raised .. with the exception of a condo ...those are being unconstru ted at an unbelievable pace. People I meet seem to own 2-3 condos a piece. Everyone thinks they'll just rent them out. I think we are almost guaranteed to have a condo collapse in the near future.
If you're not hung up on owning, this is a great spot to be in. I can already rent a luxury condo here in Toronto for less than (mortgage interest + property tax + maintenance) would cost me if I had purchased it. Rich landlords are effectively subsidizing our rents (which are very, very cheap compared to SF or NYC).
The previous owner bought at the peak and still owed double what I paid. Don't be that guy.
As a renter without much in the way of assets a high inflation high interest rate regime is really beneficial. Higher rates would mean lower prices (thus lower required deposits) and high inflation would mean quickly building equity.
Since I'm admittedly pretty ignorant of that market, I honestly can't say.
The best I can tell you is that, while foreign demand in the aggregate might be global, there are many local factors that determine whether a particular market is or is not the recipient of significant investment at any given time. We can't assume a global/universal phenomenon applies itself evenly across all localities. Indeed, many of these locales might be substitutes for one another at different points in time and under various macroeconomic circumstances.