2026-06-10
25 分钟Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, Radio, News.
Recently, my colleague Lulu Chen, who covers Asia finance here in Hong Kong,
told me a story about a Chinese investor, Tom.
Tom's a Beijing-based tech executive. He's been trading US stocks for years.
Technically, Chinese citizens aren't allowed to buy and sell shares in foreign markets,
aside from a few permitted channels.
But for years, people like Tom have used Chinese trading apps and online brokers
to invest in markets outside of China,
from blue-chip stocks like Apple and Coca-Cola to the S&P 500 exchange-traded funds.
He was doing it through a few Chinese brokerages that are very popular.
One is called Futu, one's called Tiger. These are your equivalent of Robinhood.
And because the US stock markets were doing so well,
a lot of the trading was done focusing on US stocks.
These apps are not authorized to allow Chinese investors to trade in foreign stocks.
But in the more than 10 years that these platforms have been operating,
Beijing has largely looked the other way.
For a while, it seems like all these trades were within the spirit, if not the letter of the law.
And then one day, Tom gets hit with a $15,000 tax bill for his gains trading these stocks.
It was the first time the Chinese government had even appeared to be aware
of Tom's illegal overseas gains.