Gold Bars and Tokyo Apartments: How Money Is Flowing Out of China.

Affluent Chinese have moved hundreds of billions of dollars out of the country this year, seizing on the end of Covid precautions that had almost completely sealed China’s borders for nearly three years. They are using their savings to buy overseas apartments, stocks and insurance policies. Able to fly again to Tokyo, London and New York, Chinese travelers have bought apartments in Japan and poured money into accounts in the United States or Europe that pay higher interest than in China, where rates are low and falling. The outbound shift…

Gold Mining Is Poisoning the Planet With Mercury

Jeovane de Jesus Aguiar was knee-deep in mud in the 100-yard gash he had cut into the Amazon rainforest, filtering brown water out of a pan, when he found the small, shiny flake he was looking for: a mixture of gold and mercury. Mr. Aguiar had drizzled liquid mercury into the ground in his makeshift gold mine on the eastern edge of the small South American nation of Suriname, just as he had every few days. The toxic element mixes with gold dust and forms an amalgam he can pluck…

Gold bars used to lure Chinese homebuyers amid market slowdown

Gold bars, new cars and mobile phones are among the incentives being offered to potential homebuyers by Chinese property developers as they grow increasingly desperate to boost sales. Huafa Tianfu, a developer in the eastern city of Hangzhou, has been offering up to a kilo of gold bullion to tempt people into buying its flats. According to local media reports, the amount of gold ranges from 700g of gold for an 89 sq metre flat, to just over 1kg for a 100 sq metre apartment. Property prices in the development…

Mysterious Killing of Chinese Gold Miners Puts New Pressure on Beijing

The Chinese embassy in the Central African Republic had a stark warning for its compatriots in the landlocked nation: Do not leave the capital city of Bangui. Kidnappings of foreigners were on the rise, and any Chinese person outside of Bangui was to leave those areas immediately. Less than a week later, on March 19, a group of gunmen stormed a remote gold mine far away from Bangui and killed nine Chinese workers. The Central African government has said that it investigated the massacre and concluded that a leading rebel group had…

Xi Condemns Killings in African Nation Where Russian and Chinese Interests Compete

Shortly before landing in Moscow on Monday, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, condemned the killing of nine Chinese nationals a day earlier at a gold mine in the Central African Republic, where tensions have flared between Chinese and Russian interests. Among competing claims about who was responsible — including one that blamed the Kremlin-backed Wagner mercenary group — Mr. Xi urged the authorities of the Central African Republic to bring the perpetrators to justice, according to a statement released by the Chinese foreign ministry. The ministry said two other Chinese nationals…

Best of 2022: The sludge king: how one man turned an industrial wasteland into his own El Dorado – podcast

Every Monday and Friday for the rest of December we will publish some of our favourite audio long reads of 2022, in case you missed them, with an introduction from the editorial team to explain why we’ve chosen it. From September: When a Romanian businessman returned to his hometown and found a city blighted by mining waste, he hatched a plan to restore it to its former glory. He became a local hero, but now prosecutors accuse of him a running a multimillion dollar fraud How to listen to podcasts:…