To be sure, much of the money I used for the downpayment on my house in the USA was earned in China, so...there are ways to get it out. Foreigners follow different rules, however, but Chinese citizens still had $50k/year quotas they could use, over a few family members it added up, and that wasn't the only way to get money out.
China practices 99 year leases, although everyone is expecting those leases to be rolled over with minimal amounts of money. When that didn't happen on earlier and shorter 40 or so year leases (made before the current policy was set), the central government had to step in and forced them to be rolled over, otherwise the rest of the country would have panicked.
