The Chinese are making it harder for speculators to fuel the property market. Whether this is effective or not remains to be seen. In HK there was a requirement to have a 30% deposit know it's 50% and where there was no capital gains tax there now is on a sliding scale. One of the big problems on the mainland from my perspective is build quality.
You can buy allocated bullion products through some of the banks like HSBC and the HKSE has recently allowed gold products (paper) to be sold but don't know the full details.
You can walk into most jewelers here and buy small bars. Chines Panda coins are quite popular. Chines sell there gold in tael, mace and catty. I tael is about 1.3 ounces. A lot of bars are decorative and so you do pay a premium but it is no more than what you would expect to pay in the west.
Crime in china obviously exists but to know if it's high or not is hard as there are so many people that a small percentage of cases would make it look like a crime wave if you know what I'm driving at. In HK theft is probably one the highest perpetrated crimes a lot of the time committed by mainlanders coming over the border illegally as well as being home grown. A lot of it in mainly petty pick pocketing and handbag theft is rife. You hardly here of violent crime. Mind you I would hasten to add reporting of crime and statistics is not a strong suit in China.
