Nothing will substitute that well because these are prestige luxury goods. Xi wants to send his daughter to Harvard, not to a university in Moscow. Abramovich wants to sail in Europe, not China.

It was the case in the Soviet Union too that even though the West was the enemy, the status symbols were still all Western. In a weird way the elites aspired and lusted over the produce of Western consumerism.

So did the non elites, of what they were able to see, which is why such a large emphasis was put on concealing the wealth of the commoner westerner. Something that is still huge in China. If the average Chinese person learns that even the poorest of the western world doesn't live in 10sq meter "apartment" and work 9-9/6 the party would lose control.

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese international students have been coming to the US every year for the past decade. I'm sure they've seen homelessness as well as the middle class lifestyle in the US. So far so good

Any Chinese person coming to the US is from the most privileged class. The Chinese commoner isn't even able to move freely around China.

I mean, to be fair, the poorest of the western world don't live in 10sq metre apartments...

Just look at this recent speech by Putin[1] on the matter.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FguV-zo2wpI

I doubt it. Anyone with any money or power in China already has a foot out the door, in almost all cases in a country with strong property rights and rule of law. Russian oligarchs won't find anything in China that they don't already have at home.

Highly doubtful. The last decade or so of CCP direction has been to control and punish the huge outflow of capital by rich Chinese into various western asset pools (like US and Canadian real estate) that are outside the party's reach. See also the recent controls on various cryptocurrencies. A lot of this got washed through Hong Kong and Taiwan and Singapore.

Nobody outside is going to want to secure their wealth there. If kleptocratic Russians wanted that sort of arrangement, they could just keep it in Russia.

Dubai