Gold bars and apartments in Tokyo: how money flows out of China.

Affluent Chinese have moved hundreds of billions of dollars out of the country this year, ending Covid precautions that had kept China’s borders almost completely sealed off for almost three years.

They use their savings to buy apartments, shares and insurance policies abroad. Chinese travelers have been able to fly to Tokyo, London and New York again, have bought apartments in Japan and deposited money in accounts in the United States or Europe that pay higher interest than in China, where interest rates are low and falling.

The outward shift in money partly reflects unrest within China over its sputtering post-pandemic recovery, but also deeper problems, such as an alarming slowdown in the real estate sector, the main store of wealth for households. For some people, it is also a response to fears about the direction of the economy under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has cracked down on business and strengthened the government’s hand in many aspects of society.

In some cases, Chinese people are improvising to circumvent strict Chinese government controls on transferring money abroad. They have purchased gold bars small enough to be scattered inconspicuously throughout carry-on luggage, as well as large stacks of foreign currency.

Real estate is also an option. Chinese have become the main buyers of Tokyo apartments costing $3 million or more, often paying with suitcases full of cash, said Zhao Jie, the CEO of Shenjumiaosuan, an online real estate service in Tokyo. “It’s really hard work to count this kind of money.”

Before the pandemic, he said, Chinese buyers typically bought studio apartments in Tokyo for $330,000 or less to rent out. Now they are buying much larger units and getting investment visas to relocate their families.

All told, an estimated $50 billion per month has been taken out of China this year, mostly by Chinese households and private sector companies.

Experts say the speed at which money is leaving China is unlikely to pose an immediate risk to the country’s $17 trillion economy, largely because exports of many of the country’s key industrial goods are strong, providing a steady flow generates cash.

A broader move by households to send their savings elsewhere could be cause for concern. The large-scale outflow of money has caused financial crises in Latin America, Southeast Asia and even in China itself in late 2015 and early 2016 in recent decades.

So far, the Chinese government indicates that it believes it has the situation under control. The leakage of money from China has weakened the currency, the renminbi, against the dollar and other currencies. And that renminbi weakness has helped sustain Chinese exports, which support tens of millions of Chinese jobs.

The flow of money out of China “is very manageable,” said Wang Dan, chief China economist at Hang Seng Bank’s Shanghai office.

Chinese policymakers still rely on some of the restrictions on moving money out of the country they imposed eight years ago to curb the currency crisis. Other restrictions imposed then, such as monitoring exports and imports to detect covert schemes for international money transfers, were allowed to lapse and have not been reimposed this year, even as cash outflows have resumed.

The flow of money from China roughly corresponds to the money coming in because of the country’s large trade surpluses. To the dismay of many countries elsewhere, especially in Europe, China is increasingly exporting solar panels, electric cars and other advanced products, while replacing more and more imports with domestic production.

The renminbi fell in value to a 16-year low earlier this year. Over the past two months, the rate has hovered around 7.3 against the dollar before rising slightly over the past week.

The flow of money from China that occurred eight years ago was caused by a stock market crash and a failed attempt to devalue the currency in a controlled manner. China’s central bank had to spend as much as $100 billion a month from its foreign currency reserves to keep the renminbi afloat.

By contrast, China appears to have spent about $15 billion a month since midsummer to stabilize its currency, central bank data show. “There’s no indication that it’s disorderly,” said Brad Setser, international finance specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The magnitude of the pressure is still much smaller than in 2015 or 2016.”

The outflows in 2015 and 2016 reflected efforts by large state-owned companies to shift large sums of money abroad. The government today has tighter political control over these companies, and there are no signs of a similar rush to exit the companies.

Instead, private companies and households in China have been moving money abroad. But much of people’s wealth is tied up in real estate, which cannot be easily sold.

At the same time, illegal currency exchange businesses in Shanghai, Shenzhen and other cities that exchanged renminbi into dollars and other foreign currencies were shut down by police raids eight years ago.

And regulators have closed almost all gambling trips to Macau, a separately administered Chinese territory. These junkets allowed wealthy Chinese to buy casino chips with renminbi, gamble some of it on baccarat or roulette, and then convert the rest into dollars.

Beijing has also banned most foreign investments in hotels, office towers and other assets with little geopolitical value. The architect of China’s foreign investment restrictions, Pan Gongsheng, was promoted to governor of the central bank, the People’s Bank of China, in July.

But households and businesses still manage to send money abroad.

On a recent afternoon, branches of the Bank of China and China Merchants Bank on the mainland were selling gold bars for 7 percent more than their member banks in neighboring Hong Kong. That price difference indicates that there is high demand within China for gold, which can easily be moved out of the country.

Another trick mainlanders use to get money out of China is opening bank accounts in Hong Kong and then transferring money to buy insurance products that resemble bank certificates of deposit. According to the Hong Kong Insurance Authority, premiums for new insurance policies sold to mainlanders visiting Hong Kong were 21.3 percent higher in the first half of this year than in the first half of 2019, after almost disappearing during the pandemic.

At a Bank of China branch on Hong Kong’s Kowloon Peninsula, mainland people recently waited for accounts to be opened at 7:30 am, 90 minutes before the bank was due to open. The line was so long at 8 a.m. that anyone who arrived later was lucky to get to the front of the line before the end of the business day, said Valerius Luo, a Hong Kong insurance agent.

Families then typically put $30,000 to $50,000 of U.S. currency into insurance products, several times more than before, as they look for safe places to park their savings, Mr. Luo said. “There are still people with strong capital,” he said, “and they want an investment package that retains value.”

Li you And Hikari Hida research contributed.