The latest news from Hong Kong is that there is another Great Wall in the making.
They’re calling it the Great Firewall.
It's an apparatus that limits online activity in China and, now, Hong Kong.
According to an article in The Guardian the law “gives authorities the power to demand individuals and service providers remove content, or access to content deemed threatening to national security. Noncompliance can result in fines and imprisonment for company staff or individuals. Police investigating national security cases can surveil communications and confiscate electronic devices.”
What has this to do with real estate?
Plenty…perhaps.
With the Internet’s playing the part it does in everyone’s life, at least in democracies, imagine if you were limited to what you could do online, or even prohibited from being online. For one thing, you wouldn’t be reading this blog!
The threat of losing that freedom in Hong Kong is already starting to drive residents to other countries. Canada is an obvious destination for those who chose to leave Hong Kong.
Experts say an estimated 300,000 Hong Kong residents are either Canadian citizens or have the right to live in Canada, and that another 200,000 have a legal right to enter Canada. If only 10 per cent chose to leave, and if only 10 per cent picked B.C., that’s 5,000 people looking for a place to live in B.C., many of them likely as homeowners.
The percentages could, of course, go much higher.