Did some background research... seems that ChinaBTC is ok. Trying 0.5 btc for a start. Will keep you guys posted.
The chinese bitcoin exchanges do not charge any fees, yet they do have expenses. In my mind this means that they are taking money from customer deposits to pay for their own expenses. The fact they are paying interest on deposits to give incentives to people to keep their bitcoin at the exchange only furthers this theory; I would stay away from chinese exchanges.
Chinese exchanges income
Fiat withdraw fee: ~0.4%
Venture capital by big investers: ~10 million for exchanges like Huobi/Okcoin/BTC China
Fee for futures trading using leverage
Fee for borrowing BTC, this is generally where the interest of deposited coins is from
And others like Ads
.4% is very small and would likely barely reflect the cost their banks charge for sending the money from their bank account.
For the interest, their customers will not necessarily borrow all of the money that is available but interest will be paid on all bitcoin deposited so they would be at a disadvantage from the start with this.
Even if they have money from VC, this does not mean they have money to burn. The VC investors will likely expect them to be profitable so they can ROI on their investment
I don't think top Chinese exchanges are just scams. If they need to rely on taking money from customer deposits to pay for their own expenses, how do exchanges like BTCChina that does not offer bank deposit services survive and thrive?