I think you might got confused with economic refugee and asylum seekers.
If one was purely economic refugees. Then living in a hotel and supported by your family is no chance.
But don't forget these people are claiming political refugees. And in particular political refugees from China. And in the west, anything like this are guarantee successful application no matter where you are living, and with or without family support. There is just no substitute to stick one over the big bad China. The propaganda value alone made it worth while.
Exactly, you could be a billionaire and still claim political or religious refugee status.
I don’t think any country in the world has such a thing as “economic refugee”. That is just a normal immigrant.
First, there is a difference between claiming vs. being granted asylum. Obviously anyone can claim asylum. Claiming asylum does not mean it is automatically approved. A country will go through whatever process they have, and normally you will be able to stay during the duration of the review. Usually if the claim is rejected, deportation will be ordered once all the appeals are exhausted. This is what happens in most places.
Every country has its own definitions for accepting a refugee/asylum seeker. Geopolitical considerations aside, most centre around whether they are subject to retaliation/immediate danger (political reasons or otherwise) if they return to their country of origin.
In a normal case, if you are talking to your family regularly and they are sending you money to support you, it is unlikely to pass the political persecution test since it doesn't make sense that the authorities are not cracking down on this. Furthermore, if you are depending on the government to assist you on housing (which most real asylum seekers would need), then they put you where ever they choose to. In the case of Canada, we don't have any camps, so the government is renting out whole 2/3 star hotels for this purpose.
I am not arguing that granting this person asylum is mostly political grandstanding since there has been no evidence of serious consequences. I am just saying that she obviously followed the proper procedure, even if we don't agree on the grounds which it was granted.
Obviously political asylum is a complicated thing. for example, Li Meng Yan, the discredited virologist working for Bannon could probably credibly argue that she would be subject to imprisonment if she went back to China. However, the situation is totally created by her own lies. Despite this, I expect the US will welcome her with open arms.