Last month, Shanghai-based billionaire Yimeng Huang—the CEO and chairman of gaming company XD—announced in a company memo that he and his family would relocate from China. The note leaked onto the internet and went viral on Chinese social media, sparking netizen discussions on the growing number of prominent businesspeople leaving China.

“I’m preparing my family to move abroad by next year. It’s still a plan though, and anything can happen in a year. I’m prioritizing both my family and the business. The scale of our overseas business is only growing,” Huang wrote.

“My ideal scenario is to see China’s COVID-19 quarantine policies relaxed a year from now, then China’s international relations can only improve and be more open, then we can all move around as the needs of our work and lives dictate,” he said.

Huang isn’t the only one itching to pack his bags. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Chinese citizens have endured the government’s punishing zero-tolerance strategy that aims to stamp out the virus at all costs. Chinese policies of extended mass lockdowns and rigorous testing trapped bankers in their offices, forced Tesla workers to sleep at the carmaker’s factories, and locked families inside Disneyland until all 33,000 parkgoers could be tested. Shanghai’s two-month lockdown, which lasted from April to June, saw residents resorting to barter for food and goods.

Now, faced with a continued “zero-COVID” future, China’s rich are plotting their escape. Around 10,000 high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) in China are seeking to leave their country this year and could take $48 billion in wealth with them, according to a new wealth migration report by Henley and Partners, an investment migration consultancy. Hong Kong’s numbers also rank high. The special autonomous region of China—which has pursued a similarly strict “dynamic-zero” COVID policy under Beijing’s watchful eye—is home to around 3,000 HNWI who are planning to leave this year, worth $12 billion.