I mean it's real Chinese income backed by fake paperwork. There's PRC capital controls, rich PRC national who buy RE abroad are going to do it via laundering services and has been for decade+. Banks are fine with this and have dedicated branches in diasphora area to handle because the money is good and reliable. Sometimes rich Chinese immigrants also do odd jobs to fill time, bored aunties with multi million dollar mansions in Richmond working shifts at River Rock Casino. It's a bizarre world.
I highlighted the original quote where branch is mostly Chinese-Canadian for context. Aurora is 20% Chinese, it's a big diasphora neighbourhood. There isn't some big "fake chinese income" conspiracy, it's the entire (proven) business plan (money laundering) with occasional fraud. I think pretty much everyone knew Chinese are buying million+ propertiers with laundered money, and it fuels the bubble as much as any other foreign buyer.
I’m not really sure what is happening among the rich, but among the middle class, it isn’t so much money laundering but having lots of savings with no good investment options, or just wanting to make money while someone else takes on the risk. They don’t have access to money that needs laundering.
In my experience, middle class aren't buying million+ RE, they pool together savings to send kids abroad, and maybe put a down payment on a condo that the kid pays off once they get decent job in west. And by middle class we really mean upper flat out highincome top %5-10 relative to all PRC house holds who are middle class tier1/2 regions.
But agreed, domestic non gov investment ecosystem pretty trash, hard to beat investing in your kid(s) and saving for retirement until a mature system develops. Which IMO hard goal since focus isn't to further wide wealth disparity by giving that 5-10% more consumption/investment abilities but to bring up the next quantiles of households - the actual middle class. This is where my assessment departs from most, I think "common prosperity" for PRC is getting more households richer, but at PRC development levels, that diminishes the households with enough savings to retire and surplus to invest. And this has all sorts of implications on inflation/FX rate.