Will Detroit Be The First Major Chinese City In The United States?

Is Detroit destined to become a Chinese city?  Chinese homebuyers and Chinese businesses are starting to flood into the Motor City, and the governor of Michigan is greatly encouraging this.  In fact, he has formally asked the Obama administration for 50,000 special federal immigration visas to encourage even more immigration from China and elsewhere.  So will Detroit be the first major city in the United States to be dominated by China?  It could happen.  Once upon a time, Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city in the history of the world and it had the highest per capita income in the entire country.  But now it is a rotting, decaying, bankrupt hellhole that is in desperate need of a savior, and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appears to be fully convinced that China can be that savior.

To Snyder, encouraging foreigners to invest money and buy up properties won't cost the state government much, but it could potentially have great benefits…

Under a plan to be unveiled Thursday, Gov. Rick Snyder will request 50,000 special federal immigration visas over the next five years to attract foreign professionals who are willing to work and live in the city.

 

Mr. Snyder, in an interview Wednesday, said that “this is one way for the federal government to step up to provide significant value without cost that could have a huge impact on the city’s future.”

At a news conference announcing his plan, Snyder was not shy about declaring his intentions…

"Let's send a message to the entire world: Detroit, Michigan, is open to the world."

In other words, Snyder wants China to save Detroit since nobody in this country is going to.

Snyder has also taken a couple of additional steps to encourage immigration and foreign investment, including opening up something called "an Office for New Americans"…

Opening an Office for New Americans to attract and help immigrants better adjust to life in Michigan, and designating the state as an Employer Based or EB-5 center to expedite visas and permits for immigrants who want to open business in the state with investments of at least $500,000 and 10 employees.

In essence, Snyder has done just about everything except roll out the welcome mat for the Chinese.

But this is nothing new for Governor Snyder.  In fact, he has been making overtures to China for years…

Snyder, who was a businessman before starting his political career, believes that automobiles can no longer change the fate of Detroit. He said that he has learned from the history of the United States that what has made the nation great is immigrants.

 

In the early 1990s, Snyder went to China to develop the automobile market. After he was elected as the governor of Michigan, he made at least one trip to China every year, with the aim of recruiting talent.

 

He hopes that well-educated Chinese people can revitalize the Motor City in the new era. And as he desired, after Detroit announced its bankruptcy in 2013, the Chinese began to take the dying city by storm.

 

Rich Chinese men see Detroit as a rare opportunity for investment outside their home country.

 

In 2013, without any field investigation, Dongdu International Group of Shanghai — whose assets total 5 billion yuan (US$800 million) — spent US$13.6 million to buy the David Stott building and the Detroit Free Press building at auctions in September.

And when we talk about the Chinese domination of Detroit, this is not something that is just future tense.  This is something that is already happening right now.  For example, the following is an excerpt from a CNBC article that discussed how Chinese companies are already aggressively "putting down roots in Detroit"…

Dozens of companies from China are putting down roots in Detroit, part of the country’s steady push into the American auto industry.

 

Chinese-owned companies are investing in American businesses and new vehicle technology, selling everything from seat belts to shock absorbers in retail stores, and hiring experienced engineers and designers in an effort to soak up the talent and expertise of domestic automakers and their suppliers.

The transformation that has taken place in that region of the country is absolutely remarkable.

48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in the state of Michigan were lost between December 2000 and December 2010.  Our trade deficit with China was largely responsible for that.

And now we are relying on China to come in and salvage the ruins of our gutted economic infrastructure.

Not only that, but the Chinese are also eagerly buying up homes at extremely depressed prices all over Detroit.

According to CNN, Detroit is already number four on the list of the top 10 destinations for Chinese homebuyers.  In many cases, Chinese buyers are scooping up properties without even looking at them first.  Just check out what one Detroit real estate broker told Quartz last July…

“I have people calling and saying, ‘I’m serious—I wanna buy 100, 200 properties,’” she tells Quartz, noting that one of her colleagues recently sold 30 properties to a Chinese buyer. “They say ‘We don’t need to see them. Just pick the good ones.’”

And they aren't just interested in Detroit.  As I have written about previously, one Chinese company known as "Sino-Michigan Properties LLC" actually had plans to buy 200 acres of land near the little town of Milan, Michigan and turn it into a "China City" with artificial lakes, a Chinese cultural center and hundreds of housing units for Chinese citizens.  For much more on how Chinese buyers are gobbling up real estate all over the nation, please see my previous article entitled "The Chinese Are Acquiring Large Chunks Of Land In Communities All Over America".

All of this is just another indication of how rapidly the global economic landscape is changing.

Since the late 19th Century, the United States has been the most dominant economic power in the world.

But now that reign is ending.

Just recently, a new study released by the World Bank indicated that China is now the largest economy in the world in terms of purchasing power…

A report out of the World Bank shows rapidly expanding China is poised to overtake the once invincible United States as the world's largest economy by the end of 2014.

 

The International Comparison Program looks at exchange rates to reveal purchasing power of different currencies and found that yuan in China will soon pack more punch than the mighty dollar.

 

Meanwhile, Chinese officials bashed the report as flawed, likely for fear of losing its status as a developing nation and the pollution-spewing perks that come with it.

And a couple of years ago China passed the United States and become the leader in global trade.

As the Chinese economy continues to rise and the U.S. economy continues to decline, the shift in global power is going to become even more dramatic.

Yes, let us hope for the best for our failing economy, but you also might want to teach your kids to speak Chinese just in case.