Overseas Chinese talk about their experience of Dubai crisis

Ms. Zhao, an overseas Chinese, who has lived in Dubai for seven years recently received many inquiries from her relatives and friends in China: How is life in Dubai? Are there any changes in your daily life? Zhao wrote an email at night telling her relatives what she has seen and experienced in Dubai.

Many of my relatives and friends ask me out of concern in the recent period, "How is your life there? Has the Dubai debt crisis affected you?" It is understandable that people are convinced that Dubai is in danger after reading the numerous reports by global news agencies that Dubai is about to go bankrupt. However, the daily lives of the people in Dubai have nearly not been affected at all by this crisis.

Dubai beach

Overseas Chinese in Dubai are not as vulnerable as what the outside world thinks. The majority of Chinese businessmen and Chinese people in all walks of life still work and live in Dubai as usual, and even Chinese businessmen who have investments in Dubai's housing market also have a reasonable understanding of the debt crisis.

When the Dubai government announced to reorganize Dubai World and postpone debt payments on November 25, perhaps nobody would have forecasted that this news would lead to such a great reaction around the world – share prices plummeted, investors fell into a panic, related banks and enterprises clarified their relationship with the debt, and comments and reports relentlessly criticized it…Local people therefore spent an uncommon "Festival of Sacrifice." Affected by media attacks, friends who have business in Dubai or maintain business connections with Dubai were concerned about the impact of this debt crisis. However, people afterwards discovered that the world had been somewhat overreacted to the Dubai debt crisis because things are not as serious as what media agencies have reported.

So far, as common residents, we have not felt the impact of this debt crisis on our daily lives in Dubai: Customers at shopping centers have not dwindled, and the prices of commodities in supermarkets, especially food including grain, oil, vegetables and meat, as well as other life necessities, have not gone down; instead, the prices of some foods have even gone up a little bit. Furthermore, since Dubai always adheres to the principle of implementing low import duty and exempting sales tax, it has always been a shopping paradise. Now that the year is coming to an end, shopping centers in Dubai have put many goods on various discounts as they did in the past, and the discounts are very large. On weekends, the shopping centers are a sea of customers, and those franchise stores of luxury brands also teem with customers. The purchasing power remains strong. There seems to be no difference from what is was a couple of years ago. What's more, thanks to the ongoing Dubai International Film Festival and Dubai Shopping Festival to be held in January, Dubai's tourism remains hot. According to a friend engaged in tourism in Dubai, even after the debt crisis, both the price and the occupancy rate of the seven-star Burj Al Arab and other luxury hotels remain at high levels. The business is not as bleak as the outside world thinks.