Simply put, the best way to obtain a lot of RMB is to earn it while living in China. As China allows its legal tender-which is undervalued by roughly 40%-to appreciate and as the RMB becoming stronger against the Dollar and Euro, its likely that your financial savings in RMB will worth a lot more in the future than it is now. A 2011 Time Business report predicted that the Yuan would continue to appreciate against the US Dollar about 5% annually such gains would theoretically double the money in your RMB savings account in roughly 15 years. To put it in real terms, if you deposited 63,000 RMB (roughly 10,000 USD) in an RMB savings account now, it would be worth about 20,000 USD by 2027…if the financial forecasts regarding the Yuan's appreciation prove valid. Of course any long term financial planning carries with it a bit of risk, but if the experts are correct about the future of China's economy and currency, you have the potential to profit heavily from its development. With the West in a state of stagnation, China, for the time being, seems to be filling the vacuum. And long-term China expats-who've learned the language and culture during their time here-have their foot firmly in a booming economy on the rise to superpower status. Take, for example, a friend of mine from the UK who has lived in China for the past decade: When he first arrived here, he started off as a humble ESL teacher today he is an executive at Huawei in Shenzhen. He explained to me that learning Mandarin opened up a "secret door" to the world of Chinese business and that China is a rapidly developing country with "endless employment possibilities." He firmly believes that he would not have reached this level of success if he had stayed in England.
I also remember the conversation I had with a Nigerian businessman on a bus from Hong Kong to Guangzhou. He, like my English friend, told me that after living in China for years and learning the language, his textile business grew into an extremely profitable enterprise-something he also believes would have been impossible for him to do back home. And even though recent reports have indicated that China's economy is slowing down-economic growth dropped to 7.8% for the first half of 2012-it's still looking strong and steady when compared to recent developments in the US, Europe and other emerging BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia and India), at least for the time being… It definitely seems that if you master the language and culture and put in the hard work, accomplishing the "Chinese Dream" can become a reality. Guanxi, the Mandarin word for "relationships", is a fundamental/imperative attribute of contemporary Chinese culture. By knowing the right people and building this special "relationship" with them, life in the Middle Kingdom becomes a lot easier and comfortable (see above).
However, the only true way to understand this complex social institution is to live in China for an extended period of time, comprehend the culture and build your personal contact list.
In retrospect, it takes years to construct an effective guanxi network, and the more guanxi you have, the easier everything becomes, from landing a new job to "fixing" a traffic ticket-even receiving discounts at a restaurant where you know the owner! So while many foreigners say that expat life is already quite easy-with the high salaries, low cost of living and the frequent Chinese custom of preferential treatment towards foreigners-the lifers who've spent extended years here building guanxi truly know how good it can actually be.
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