China's rich flee crackdowns for 'Asia's Switzerland' Singapore.

Before he vanished in mid-February, Bao Fan, one of China's best-known investment bankers, had reportedly been looking for a safe place to park his wealth.

Bao, the founder of China Renaissance, was in the process of establishing a private wealth management company in Singapore to transfer money out of China and Hong Kong, the Financial Times reported last month, citing four people familiar with the plans.

Bao, who has joined a long list of influential businessmen to suddenly disappear in China, is just one of a growing number of wealthy Chinese businesspeople who have looked to Singapore - dubbed the 'Switzerland of Asia' - to escape Beijing's crackdowns on private industry and corruption.

'Wealth has flooded into Singapore from China and Hong Kong in recent years,' a wealth manager at a Singaporean bank with a large number of Chinese clientele, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera.

'In confidential conversations, many of them have named the disappearances of Chinese business people along with uncertain economic times as primary reasons for moving money...