Just here to share my personal experience, as Arbitrage does work as I have moved coins to BTCChina from Gox, stamp and btce.
How do you get your money out of China?
Pretty straight forward, international USD wire to your designated bank account after arbitrage (BTC -> CNY -> USD) has been completed with the bitcoins provided.
Keeping in mind that Arbitrage generates a % ROI week on week depending on spread, and sometimes under performs the appreciation of bitcoin value, but it at least is a bit more of a sure thing, and as it has a different risk profile, is a great way for you to hedge and increase your government backed currency.
Cheers,
Sam
Do you have a Chinese citizen doing the exchange and wire for you? Are they able to provide tax information for exchanging large amounts? Or have you found another way to move money out of the country?
I am an Australian Born Chinese, and my wife is a Chinese Citizen (from Beijing), she does the wires, we use a combination of shadow banks and relatives who own international trade businesses to exchange the required amound of RMB into USD to keep the machine going.
Moving money is not a problem when you've got trusted networks, the real bottleneck we usually face is when spreads are really good, we usually end up running out of bitcoins to sell, so to tap into other peoples reserves "on demand" I think is a great way to capitalise on spreads when they are at their best (at one stage BTC China and BTC E had a 58% spread on the 18th of Nov rally).
I believe a mixture of speculation and arbitrage yields the best results, as both hold two very distinct risk profiles that complement each other during different stages of bitcoins growth cycle.
If you're looking to capitalise on future arbitrage opportunities, my skype id is "aspiringentrepreneur", feel free to add me to discuss things further.
Cheers,
Sam