Sinophobia in Canada: The Vancouver housing crisis with Chinese characteristics
admin July 22, 2019 0 COMMENTSNg Weng Hoong in Vancouver
July 22, 2019, Monday 12.41 pm
3,052 words minus headline and footnotes
Student Rose Wu has written a poignant commentary about how Vancouver’s decade-long challenges with housing affordability has turned into a racial discourse. Her 678-word piece (1) in the online publication, The Tyee, should be compulsory reading for the handful of influential politicians, academics and journalists whose campaign against skyrocketing prices has cast a pall on “Asian-looking people” while downplaying the role of other major factors.
So, how did the Canadian housing story become linked to race? Specifically, what has led to the framing of this narrative as the “Vancouver housing crisis with Chinese characteristics”?
Ms Wu doesn’t need to look far for an explanation. In separate commentaries preceding her July 4 piece, three media professionals and an academic laid out some of the themes of the “Blame the Chinese ” storyline.
Part 1 of this article looks at the comments put forth by local Vancouver journalists Mitchell Anderson and Lynda Steele while part 2 examines the “unimpeachable” arguments offered by Josh Gordon, an assistant professor at the Simon Fraser University (SFU), and Ian Young, the Vancouver correspondent for the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.
Part 1. The view from the ground: Mitchell Anderson and Lynda Steele
Mitchell Anderson: Chinese capital flight, tax avoidance
In his July 3 commentary (2) in The Tyee, freelance writer Mitchell Anderson summarizes the popular opinions that collectively blame China, Chinese immigrants and their money for Vancouver’s housing problems. His summary is noteworthy for not mentioning the domestic factors that have contributed to the region’s housing boom or crisis. This would include a decade of prolonged low interest rates, the surge in bank lending for home buying, the rise of alternative mortgage lenders, the region’s strong economy and jobs market, restrictive anti-supply policies and practices by the various levels of governments, the shortage of rental-only (3) developments, the inter-generational transfer of wealth, population growth, and record tourism arrivals.
According to Mr Anderson’s one-dimensional explanation, China’s wealthy together with its criminal elements and corrupt officials have spirited a huge amount of money out of their country into Canada’s housing market. He cites a Bloomberg story about US$800 billion leaving China since 2014 without asking if a large part of that is foreign direct investment (FDI) projects undertaken by the country’s many large companies in various parts of the world. His suggestion that the bulk of that US$800 billion has gone into buying Metro Vancouver’s C$50 billion (US$38 billion)-a-year housing market is absurd: imagine a garter snake (4) trying to swallow a horse.
Mr Anderson also repeats a widely circulated story that wealthy Chinese migrants evade paying taxes after arriving in planeloads through Canada’s Business Immigration Program that ran from 1980 to 2014. The “satellite family” (5) phenomenon is often portrayed as widespread among Chinese immigrants where the man returns to China to work and pays no taxes to Canada while his wife and children live off welfare in their new homeland. The Canadian media’s obsession with Chinese satellite families pales in comparison with its surprising lack of interest in the far bigger tax evasion problems posed by the country’s corporations (6) and powerful elite (7).
Lynda Steele: DINK couple can only afford a condo in Vancouver
When you and your partner are a high-powered Double-Income-No-Kid (DINK) couple who cannot afford one of those C$20 million waterfront mansions, who do you blame for your “housing crisis”?
Unlike
“I should be living in a mansion in Shaughnessy, right? Champagne dreams and caviar wishes?” Ms Steele asks half-mockingly. Instead of the high life befitting her celebrity status, she and her partner have to settle for a condo. She blames wealthy Chinese migrants and money-launderers working with greedy developers and incompetent politicians for having priced them out of the mansion.
The most telling but unstated point in her comment is that the “Vancouver housing crisis” (15) story means different things to different people. The homeless and the poor now have to share that narrative with those who feel they should be owning multi-million-dollar single-family houses in the city.
To support her argument, Ms Steele cites Simon Fraser University (SFU) urban planner Andy Yan’s 2015 “study” of 172 expensive homes in an affluent section of Vancouver’s west side. Mr Yan was given a set of selected data by Mr Eby (16), the NDP’s housing critic when it was in opposition. Suspiciously, 66% of those homes were bought by people with “non-Anglicized Chinese names.”
The study’s apparently pre-determined conclusion had the desired effect of igniting national outrage for the “evidence” it provided that new Chinese immigrants and their capital had taken over Vancouver’s housing market. Over time, reporters were citing that 66% figure (17) with no reference to the tiny sample size of 172 houses.
When Vancouver’s
In a bizarre twist, it was
“It proves that those buyers are ethnically Chinese. I don’t think that’s disputable. If someone’s got a purely Chinese name, they’re ethnically Chinese.
“Secondly, I think to an almost irrefutable degree, it proves they have some form of Chinese as a language mother tongue.”
Judging from Mr Glavin’s coverage and Ms James’ comment, it still has not occurred to Canada’s talking heads that a survey sample of 172 houses taken from more than 42,000 Greater Vancouver homes (24) sold in 2015 is statistically meaningless. The survey should never have seen the light of day, much less evolve into an authoritative study of reference. Few have noted that Mr Eby had focused his data-collection effort on a small section of Vancouver’s west side noted for its high representation of ethnic Chinese residents. This methodology can also be applied to, say, parts of Surrey and Oak Street to show that people with “non-Anglicized Indian” and “non-Anglicized Jewish” names dominate certain neighbourhoods. What does it prove? Nothing, except that the methodology was likely racially motivated and its “finding” of a high rate of Chinese home ownership was rigged from the start.
With the mainstream media and academia failing to ask critical questions, it was left to a former politician living in eastern Canada to warn about the “Yellow Peril” racist nature of the inquiry.
“Eby’s guy (Andy Yan) looked at the names of the 172 buyers, screening them for ‘non-anglicized’ Chinese names, which is…racist,” said Garth Turner (25) in his November 2, 2015 blog piece.
“Of course just looking at names does not reveal if the buyers are Canadian citizens, landed immigrants, permanent residents or the children and spouses of people working abroad but investing here.”
If Ms Wu wants to know why, how or when the housing discussion turned racial, the Eby-Yan study of the 172 houses would be a key moment.
Part 2. The “Unimpeachables”: Josh Gordon and Ian Young
SFU academic Josh Gordon announced his entry into the debate in May 2016 with a sweeping declaration that “puts a lot of the blame for the housing crisis on foreign buyers, and buyers from China in particular.” He delivered this conclusion in a rudimentary paper (26) built largely on news clippings, the flawed Demographia survey (27), and his own arguments that money from China had made housing in Vancouver unaffordable for local wage earners.
The public policy specialist, who admits he is not a housing expert or an economist, dismisses the role of other factors in the region’s housing price surge of 2009 to 2018. He shows little interest in
He supports taxes as a major solution to make housing affordable for two reasons: they discourage foreign investors from entering the province’s real estate market while raising revenues presumably for the government to build affordable homes for local residents. Ironically, 74% of BC residents (28) told a recent survey that the deluge of new taxes is adding to the region’s housing and living costs. At the same time, the taxes and new regulations are deterring investors, both local and foreign, from adding supply to meet the housing demand of the province’s growing population. Since the introduction of the foreign
None of this fazes
Jens von Bergmann, a founder of MountainMath, an independent Vancouver company which provides data analysis, has written a critique (31) of the data and methodology that
While both have raised valid points about data and methodology, their dispute risks becoming a narrow academic discussion for ignoring the bigger issue of
The surge in Canada’s money supply — a basic building block in the understanding of modern economics — is glaringly not on his radar, as can be seen from his 2016 paper and subsequent public pronouncements. According to StatCan, Canada’s M2 money supply (35) measuring the total amount of cash, checking deposits and convertible near-term money in circulation doubled from less than $900 billion in 2009 to more than $1.7 trillion by mid-2019. Along with the world’s major economies, bank lending and money circulation in Canada exploded in the aftermath of the 2008/9 global financial crisis. This was the result of a concerted joint effort by the world’s leading governments and central banks to boost spending to prevent the global economy from collapsing under the weight of the US subprime crisis and its disastrously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A large chunk of that new liquidity went into mortgage lending that ignited a global housing boom, Metro Vancouver included.
There is also a strong case for
In recent years, Metro Vancouver has witnessed the emergence of a high-tech sector (37) and the liquefied natural gas industry (38) along with a booming tourism trade (39) that seem to have escaped
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Gordon-von Bergmann duel lies not in the merit of their respective arguments, but the media’s coverage. Mr Gordon’s Wozny paper was given prominent coverage by the SCMP and ZeroHedge (40) and several local newspapers including the Vancouver Sun (41) Vancouver Courier (42), and StarVancouver (43) while Mr von Bergmann’s critical review was not mentioned at all (as of my writing this commentary).
Ian Young, the SCMP’s Vancouver correspondent, gave
Not content with his lengthy puff piece,
But instead of inviting skepticism and derision from the public, the media’s lack of objectivity and impartiality has become the new norm in the housing debate.
This strikes at the core of
The harsh reality is the Canadian public (48) is already convinced that foreign capital, especially Chinese, is the source of Metro Vancouver’s housing crisis. The public is not interested to continue with the discussion. The Chinese blamers have won.
Over the past year, this guilt-by-association trend for “Asian-looking people” has extended to their alleged involvement in widespread tax evasion by satellite families, casino money-laundering, and the opioids crisis.
As if these challenges weren’t enough, Chinese Canadians must contend with three emerging major trends that will subject the community to further suspicion.
Firstly, Chinese Canadians, despite their mostly negative sentiments towards Beijing, have the new burden of proving they are not China’s proxy (49). But not without basis, there are growing fears in Canada’s policy-making and security establishments that some immigrants of Chinese descent are potential conduits of influence and espionage for Beijing.
Secondly, the public’s conflation of Chinese with China is becoming a
Thirdly, in line with the United States and Europe, anti-immigration xenophobia (50) and populism (51) are on the rise in Canada. Non-white immigrants will have to contend with increasing “go back to your country” sentiments,
Footnotes:
- https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/07/04/Vancouver-Race-Estate-Hurt
July 4, 2019. Vancouver’s ‘Race Estate’ Market Has Hurt Many of Us - https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/07/03/Canada-Quit-Grovelling-China-Push-Back
July3 2019. Canada Should Quit Grovelling and Push Back Against China. Cracking down on real estate money laundering and tax avoidance would help Canadians and send a message. - https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-rental-housing-opinion
July10 2019: Vancouver council’s zero-sum game on rental housing is doing much harm - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_garter_snake
- https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-why-we-need-to-stop-subsidizing-foreign-ownership-of-metro-housing
May1 2019. Douglas Todd: Why we need to stop subsidizing foreign ownership of Metro Vancouver housing - https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2019/06/18/canadian-companies-failed-to-pay-billions-of-taxes-owed-new-cra-report-reveals.html
June18 2019. Canadian companies failed to pay billions of taxes owed, new CRA report reveals - https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cra-kmpg-settlement-taxes-1.5154610
May30 2019. CRA signs secret settlement with wealthy KPMG clients involved in offshore tax scheme - https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2019FIN0051-000914
May9 2019. Billions in money laundering increased B.C. housing prices,expert panel finds - https://www.oakbaynews.com/opinion/b-c-views-money-laundering-melodrama-made-for-tv
May26 2019. Money-laundering melodrama made for TV - https://www.richmond-news.com/opinion-5b-dirty-money-in-b-c-real-estate-guesstimate-based-on-standard-formula-1.23819165
May10 2019. ‘$5B dirty money in B.C. real estate’ guesstimate based on standard formula - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-15/vancouver-s-dirty-money-figures-the-smoking-gun-that-wasn-t
May 15, 2019Vancouver’s Dirty Money Figures: The Smoking Gun That Wasn’t - https://www.straight.com/news/1160506/parallels-between-david-eby-and-mackenzie-king
November 5, 2018. The parallels between David Eby and Mackenzie King - https://www.straight.com/news/1245571/david-ebys-trail-embedded-bombshells-about-money-laundering
On David Eby’s trail of embedded bombshells about money laundering - https://globalnews.ca/news/5407549/lynda-steele-condo-owner-vancouver-dink
June 27, 2019. Lynda Steele: I own a condo in Vancouver and I’m a DINK - http://www.onepacificnews.com/2018/11/11/the-media-crisis-in-vancouvers-housing-crisis-demographia
November 11, 2018. The media crisis in Vancouver’s housing crisis: Demographia - https://www.bcbusiness.ca/mainland-chinese-buyers-account-for-70-per-cent-of-market-but-what-does-that-even-mean
November 2, 2015. Mainland Chinese buyers account for 70per cent ofmarket . But what does that even mean? - https://twitter.com/ianjamesyoung70/status/1145400523564077056
June 30, 2019. Ian Young: “66% of Westside housebuyers having Chinese full names (Yan 2015)” - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-foreign-ownership-study-1.3301061
November 2, 2015. Vancouver foreign ownership research prompts cries of racism inhot housing market - http://www.vancouversun.com/business/douglas+todd+there+nothing+racist+about+metro+vancouver+housing+study/11515012/story.html
November15 2015. Douglas Todd: There’s nothing racist about Metro Vancouver housing study - https://www.scmp.com/comment/blogs/article/1876140/why-non-anglicised-chinese-names-matter-vancouvers-housing-market-no
November 6, 2015. Why ‘non-Anglicised Chinese names’ matter in Vancouver’s housing market: No, it’s not about race - https://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/ian-young-on-vancouvers-freak-show-housing-market
May16 2016. Ian Young on Vancouver’s ‘freak show’ housing market - https://www.macleans.ca/economy/realestateeconomy/andy-yan-the-analyst-who-exposed-vancouvers-real-estate-disaster
February14 2018. Andy Yan, the analyst who exposed Vancouver’s real estate disaster - https://pricetags.ca/2019/03/28/duke-of-data-andy-yan-was-right-all-alongvancouver-housing-ownership/
March28 2019. Duke of Data Andy Yan Was Right All Along~Vancouver Housing Ownership - https://www.rebgv.org/market-watch/monthly-market-report/december-2015.html
December 2015. Metro Vancouver home sales set an all-time record in 2015 - https://www.greaterfool.ca/2015/11/02/yellow-peril
November2 2015. Yellow Peril
PART 2 - https://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/mpp/pdfs/Vancouver%27s%20Housing%20Affordability%20Crisis%20Report%202016%20Final%20Version.pdf
May 2016 Vancouver’s Housing Affordability Crisis: Causes, Consequencesand Solutions. - http://www.onepacificnews.com/2015/10/08/vancouver-doesnt-have-the-worlds-second-most-unaffordable-housing-the-art-of-selling-and-defusing-a-crisis
October 8, 2015. Vancouver doesn’t have the world’s second most unaffordable housing: The art of selling a crisis - https://biv.com/article/2019/06/real-estate-affordability-worsened-taxes-and-limited-options-say-bc-residents June 3, 2019. Real estate affordability worsened by taxes and limited options,
say B.C. residents - http://www.bcrea.bc.ca/docs/news-2018/2018-12.pdf
December 2018. BC Home SalesDecline 25% in 2018 - https://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/mpp/WorkingPaperSeries/Solving%20Wozny%27s%20puzzle%20on%20decoupling%20and%20housing%202019%20Gordon%20(1).pdf
Solving Wozny’s Puzzle: Foreign ownership and Vancouver’s “de-coupled” housing market - https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/blog/2019/06/25/how-not-to-analyze-the-roots-of-the-affordability-crisis
June 25, 2019. How not to analyze the roots of the affordability crisis: Taking a closer look at Josh Gordon’s “solving Wozny’s Puzzle” working paper. - https://twitter.com/vb_jens/status/1145186264326426624
June 29, 2019. Jens von Bergmann: “…claims that Josh’s arguments show that “foreign ownership” is the main reason for unaffordable housing in Vancouver are not “unimpeachable” but irresponsible.” - https://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/mpp/WorkingPaperSeries/All%20bark%20no%20bite%20Reply%20to%20von%20Bergmann%202019%20Gordon%20Final.pdf
July 10, 2019. All bark, no bite: A reply to Jens von Bergmann - https://twitter.com/notaYIMBY/status/1145718407930810368
June 30, 2019. @notaYIMBY: “…correlation does not prove causation” - https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1010011601
StatCan. Chartered bank assets and liabilities and monetary aggregates - https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/affluent-canadians-are-worried-about-wealth-transfer-671751984.html
January 30, 2018. Affluent Canadians are worried about wealth transfer - https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/09/25/1575762/0/en/Tech-Salaries-Continue-to-Rise-in-BC-While-Talent-Shortages-Persist.html
September 25, 2018. Tech Salaries Continue toRise in BC While Talent Shortages Persist - https://canada.constructconnect.com/joc/news/resource/2019/05/prosperity-b-c-s-lng-industry-takes-shape-expert
May 27, 2019. Prosperity for all when B.C.’s LNG industry takes shape - https://www.travelpress.com/vancouver-reports-another-record-year/#.XTDIllBJmqA
June 27, 2019. Vancouver Reports Another Record Year. Metro Vancouver attracts record 10.7 million overnight visitors in 2018. - https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-29/vancouver-housing-unaffordability-due-foreign-ownership-chinese-funds-migrant
June 29, 2019. Vancouver Housing Unaffordability Due To Foreign Ownership, Chinese Funds, & Migrant Millionaires, Study Says - https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/the-22-5-billion-drop-figures-show-vancouver-real-estate-coming-back-to-reality-realtor-says
July 4, 2019. The $22.5 billion drop: Figures show Vancouver real estate coming ‘back to reality,’ realtor says - https://www.vancourier.com/data-paints-compelling-picture-of-foreign-money-skewing-vancouver-housing-market-1.23862035
June20 2019. Data paints ‘compelling’ picture of foreign money skewing Vancouver housing market - https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/06/19/analysis-shows-foreign-money-fuelled-vancouvers-shockingly-high-real-estate-prices-says-academic.html
June 19, 2019.Analysis shows foreign money fuelled Vancouver’s shockingly high real estate prices, says academic - https://www.scmp.com/news/china/money-wealth/article/3016074/unimpeachable-study-calls-foreign-ownership-primary-culprit
June26 2019. Foreign ownership main culprit for unaffordable housing in Vancouver, a top destination for Chinese funds, ‘unimpeachable’ study says - https://corp.scmp.com/2079-2.
SCMP: “The importance of understanding the world from both sides of the story, which is key to truth and fairness.” - https://twitter.com/ianjamesyoung70/status/1145036831408324608
June 29, 2019. “The name of Gordon’s report is “Solving Wozny’s Puzzle”.” - https://twitter.com/ianjamesyoung70/status/1144383582577631232
June 27, 2019. Ian Young to Jens von Bergmann: “I just read your piece for a third time…what’s the word…insane?” - https://biv.com/article/2018/06/most-blame-foreigners-high-home-prices-vancouver
June 27, 2019. Most blame foreigners for high home prices in Vancouver - https://vancouversun.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/officials-warned-china-india-could-use-communities-in-canada-to-advance-agendas/wcm/f54d123d-4731-4e19-904c-b93c50cbe400
July 12, 2019. China, India could use communities in Canada to advance agendas, feds warned - https://globalnews.ca/news/5288135/immigration-threat-canadians-poll/
May 22, 2019. 37% in Ipsos pollsay immigration is a ‘threat’ to white Canadians — what’s the threat? - https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/07/15/Canada-Divisions-Hardening
July 15, 2019. Canada’s Divisions Are Hardening - https://time.com/5626134/trump-tweet-congresswomen-reaction
July14 2018. ‘Why Don’t They Go Back’: President Trump Tweets at Congresswomen of Color.
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