If you’re willing to pay there are always ways to move value out. For example, buy $1M worth of t-shirts inside China. Sell for a 5% loss outside of China but say you sold at a 20% loss. Now you have money outside of China. You had to pay a decent fee and have a partner outside of China to do it but hey, that’s what gangs are for.

Ever wonder why both Chinese investors and the Saudi sovereign fund were prepared to pay huge premiums in valuations when investing in companies, even though it was apparent it was likely they'd make a loss?

This is it. If you have $100M inside China, can take a 30% loss but end up with $70M in the US that isn't a bad deal.

> Ever wonder why both Chinese investors and the Saudi sovereign fund were prepared to pay huge premiums in valuations when investing in companies, even though it was apparent it was likely they'd make a loss?

This is totally unrelated. If you’ve got money outside the country you’ve already won, the point is that Chinese people can’t freely participate in foreign funds.

For example, many funds (sequoia, light speed, etc) maintain separate independent China funds to which the Chinese are restricted. It should be obvious to say, but a Chinese person cannot easily get wealth out of the country using a Chinese investment fund.

> If you have $100M inside China, can take a 30% loss but end up with $70M in the US that isn't a bad deal.

That’s not what GP is describing. GP is describing fraud wherein you lie about your losses (take 5% loss, report 20% loss). Everything you claim you earned goes back to China, but the gap between reported losses and true losses stays outside the country.

Note that you still want to be investing in a somewhat successful business for this scheme, to minimize loss of capital.

> For example, many funds (sequoia, light speed, etc) maintain separate independent China funds to which the Chinese are restricted.

Indeed. And look at the valuations those specific funds pay.

> It should be obvious to say, but a Chinese person cannot easily get wealth out of the country using a Chinese investment fund.

It's not easy for a rich person to move $100M either.

What challenges are there in moving that kind of money around? I imagine if you're that rich you have a private banker that deals with any AML reporting that has to be done on $100M

I mean there are rules but the corruption is rampant.

I know folks who set up companies who export. They get an invoice from a US company for $1M in goods, then cancel after sending “the company” money.

Why don’t they use crypto to take money out?

IIRC until recently over 20% of Bitcoin's hashing was performed in China. Spend CNY to buy electricity. Get Bitcoin. Sell Bitcoin for USD.

China had more than 50% of Bitcoin's hashing rate. Most of it probably was to launder CNY out of the country. I suspect there is still some underground mining despite the clampdown. The days of large scale mining seems to be over, though.

Because despite what crypto MLM shills claim their “market caps” are, there’s no way to turn any amount of Bitcoin into serious amounts of money like hundreds of millions of actual dollars. Any attempt to liquidate that sort of dollar value out of crypto will quickly show what a sham the whole pyramid scheme of inflated value is.

Tesla sold nearly a billion dollars of Bitcoin in Q2 2022 and took home over 60 million of profit.

https://blockworks.co/tesla-sells-bitcoin-for-profit-still-p...

I think most people would consider a billion dollars as a serious amount of money. Inflation isn't that bad yet ;)

Tether volumes on Tron and Ethereum would suggest that perhaps you may be incorrect. Probably not hundreds of millions of dollars at once if you aren't working with legitimate OTC desks who can handle that size but even if you work with the more sketchy p2p types it is possible to do 7-8 figure transactions.

The authorities actively hunt down those who do it