6 ms·

Baidu found China’s “ghost cities” but is keeping their locations mostly secret

99 points by tmlee 11y ago

Mimick 11y ago
I saw a documentary once about two ghost cities, the documentary was 6 years old and those cites were almost with 0 resident, I saw on comment Chinese people saying that those cities are full now. It's just China being two steps forward.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  Most Chinese are fairly nationalistic. They're not going to complain about this to a foreign documentarian, especially if there's political reprisal for criticizing the one-party regime that runs everything. This is why stuff like this is important. We get a view behind the propaganda veil. The narrative of "See, we planned ahead all is good," is questionable especially considering their recent stock market and economic woes.
  - Mimick 11y ago
    Actually not really, on the documentary everyone complained... even a guy working with the government and specially on real estate. It's more like TV channels and newspaper trying to give you news that blew your mind, 2010s marketing = WTF effect.
- nbevans 11y ago
  I think I saw the same documentary. They are only ghost cities for so long. Then the government "seeds" the city by moving some public sector offices there (which in China could mean 100,000+ workers). That alone is enough to kick start the city into life.
  - Mimick 11y ago
    The thing is that not like those cities are cheap to get an apartment in... China is more like still having a resident problem than a first world problem of ghost cities.
- npalli 11y ago
  This is exactly why the Baidu study is important. China is so big and data quality so poor that you can create your own version of ghost city narrative ("big crash" or "people moving in no worries" etc.) by selecting 10 cities. Even looking at things at a gross level ("cement/steel consumed") can only hint at the massive over-investment in property. Even the govt. is probably not sure.
- josefresco 11y ago
  Aren't the "ghost cities" really investment properties for wealthier Chinese living in the cities? I seem to remember reading that there's a lack of diverse investment opportunities, so many invest in condos that they'll never use/inhabit. Maybe this is the precursor to the next step of "seeding"?
  - bpolverini 11y ago
    Partly, but it is primarily to bring those living in rural areas into an urban context as a mechanism for modernizing the economy. Right now, under the hukou system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system), you can't just move anywhere you want. What ends up happening is those living in rural areas illegally move to cities like Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen for work, but can't get their children educated or get healthcare. This is a way to prevent mass migration to the first-tier cities.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
happywolf 11y ago
I would treat anything from Baidu with a grain of salt, mainly Baidu is not the most technical competent company, even among Chinese companies. There are other researches on ghost cities using methods like at night counting the number of units with lights on and do this for consequtive n nights, or measure the total power consumption over a period of time.
- hodder 11y ago
  What makes you say Baidu is not technically competent? Andrew Ng's work alone seems to be on the cutting edge of machine learning and voice/image recognition. While Andrew Ng's work gets a lot of press, there appears to be other interesting work coming out of Baidu in O2O, search, wiki, image,video, self driving cars etc. They also appear to be a well run business as evidenced by rapid revenue and earnings growth for over a decade. I'm biased as a BIDU shareholder, but that is precisely why I'm interested in your critism.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Without massive support from the Chinese government they would get crushed. That's not the environment that breeds competence.
    - sbilstein 11y ago
      Huh? The Chinese govt is known for not allowing foreign web companies lots of freedom to compete but there are certainly domestic search engines to compete with. Baidu has about 71% share of the search market in China.
  - hueving 11y ago
    They exist primarily because competition was pushed out by the government.
  - happywolf 11y ago
    Simple. Did you actually use Baidu? I do, on a regular basis. Let me elaborate Andrew Ng no doubt is a famous researcher, but I am talking about a common user's experience, and no, I don't see anything that reminds of machine learning while using Baidu services. To give you an example, search for 'Windows 7' in Baidu. Here is the screen capture of the results I got (http://imgur.com/nNBSo3g http://imgur.com/nNBSo3g), basically there is no mention of Microsoft's site. I do see the first is the link for people download this software for free. Ok, where is the machine learning? There could be a few reasons explaining this behavior, but I don't wish to go into those. To say the least: if it is not technical issue, it is ethical. Both are very important to shareholders. As a control, I searched for the same on Google, and the first 2 results are from wikipedia, while the rest are from microsoft.com, mixed with news results from news sites, which are very to the point. Another example, Baidu's SDK has opened up security holes up to 100 million Android devices (http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/02/bunk-baidu-sdk-puts-backdoor-on-millions-of-android-devices/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/02/bunk-baidu-sdk-puts-backd...), and unfortunately, this isn't the first incident in 2015. As far as I can recall, there are at least 3-4 similar issues, unintentionally or intentionally caused by technical incompetency. Disclosure: I worked in China for some time and now still got business connection with it. I am not an armchair warrior to bash China.
zero-rated 11y ago
Sort of like how "ghost HN users" who keep voting qz.com stories to the front page are kept secret?
wahsd 11y ago
I would like to just say that Quarz is SUCH A GREAT new journalism portal. It seems to strike a solid balance of covering major global developments by touching on a linchpin issue and describing that aspect thoroughly and in an easy to understand manner.
schainks 11y ago
I'll dispute one data point on that map: Xiaoshan, just across the Qiantang river from Hangzhou. I lived there from 2009-2010. When I moved there it had recently been renamed/rezoned into Xiaoshan District of Hangzhou city. So technically, Xiaoshan is not a city anymore. Also, despite an obvious wealth gap between new developments and "older" parts of southern Xiaoshan, the place was still _teeming_ with people as Chinese cities do. Xiaoshan had its own local and high-speed rail stations, too. Let's paint a brief picture of this place for your procrastination pleasure ;) I’m excerpting a couple things from my journal, and this is the tip of the iceberg of what I experienced there. What Xiaoshan is not: miles of high rises with no one there like other “ghost cities”. It is instead an old farming "city" with a new high-rises and pavement slowly taking over from the north. Central Xiaoshan is where the meld is happening. On the outskirts of Xiaoshan district, pockets of new developments and factories pepper farmlands like little islands. Joining them together was a network of new, large expressways with huge road-side billboards boasting the new “zhejiang high technology hub”. As one cabbie explained to me about 10 months into my stay, “15 years ago this entire place was rice fields”. He struggled to adapt to modern life so quickly, and knew he had to for his family. Another cabbie having a harder time adjusting actually called me a “white monster” and pleaded I don’t any marry locals or else I'll bring bad luck to their families. The only time Xiaoshan felt "ghost" was on these outskirts of these “islands" where developments abruptly ended and turned into farmland that was scheduled to be converted soon. Roads suddenly disappeared. Storefronts and commercial buildings vanished. High rises gave way to farms and shanty towns that housed pockets of people living in extraordinarily poor conditions compared to what was half a mile away. People without reliable tap water and electricity, while I lived in a new high rise less than 2 miles away. My old bosses thought it would be cheeky to house me in a new apartment building named after a famous US State. This building was actually a de-facto high-end local brothel on the edge of the central Xiaoshan “island”. Late night this place was a Chinese version of Animal House. I'll leave the details out here, but this building was lawless. Literally - the police handled _nothing_ that happened there and were probably paid to stay away. The apartment building was also attached to a mega-mall that was mostly empty all the time. There was a spanking new digital projection movie theater with 500 seats, a huge KTV, a few struggling restaurants, every luxury brand store you can think of, and typical department store wares. Movie nights were interesting. The theater attendance was so low, I’d often be the only person in a theater with a 70 foot screen all to myself. Sometimes the staff would hang with me to watch movies b/c they had jack else to do. Foreign movies were censored in weird ways: I distinctly remember how the audio in Iron Man 2 would always mute the word "Russia". Every time Ivan Vanko's spoke in Russian, the Chinese subtitles would say he’s speaking Afghani - no mentioning of Russia/Russian allowed, apparently! I couldn’t read fast enough to know if the dialogue was translated correctly, though. Among the “islands" between Xiaoshan and the river also lay fabric and electronics factories, and compounds for communities of the very wealthy. One of the best private schools in all of Zhejiang sat in the middle of a high rise neighbourhood of shiny, expensive new buildings. 15 minutes away, Cisco had a two tower office complex seemingly in the middle of nowhere full of people who lived nearby. Hop on the freeway, drive past Alibaba HQ (which employs thousands), take the bridge across the river, and you're dropped into downtown Hangzhou, which is still being altered to accomodate larger traffic flow. Xiaoshan was hardly ghost, but had pockets of activity. Sparse is probably what you would call Xiaoshan. Ride the bus from central Xiaoshan through these “islands” of factory workers and technology, and you see a very dramatic picture of China moving at full tilt. Xiaoshan was developed very quickly and continues to do what "new" developments in China do: grow fast and grow big. Many of the "new rich" residents quickly moved to this district as it rose to escape crowded downdown. The local government is very focused on turning Hangzhou into a large metropolis similar in scope to Shanghai. They have a ton of land to work with still. If I ever go back one day, I’ll probably have trouble recognising the place. So no, Xiaoshan is hardly a ghost city. Btw, the G20 next year will be in Hangzhou. Wouldn't be surprised if Xiaoshan shows up again soon! Edit: cleaned up my writing a bit.
Torgo 11y ago
Is it possible for a foreigner to travel to these cities and take pictures?
- schainks 11y ago
  Absolutely! I used to live in one of those "cities". Just wrote a post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10515003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10515003
kelvin0 11y ago
Hey, isn't there a refugee Crysis in Europe? How about filling up these ghost towns with actual people in dire need of shelter and other basic necessities?
- razhang 11y ago
  That’s totally no problem, if those people have money, or else you know…
- mastax 11y ago
  China also has (hundreds of millions) of incredibly poor people who would like to live in one of these ghost cities. The problem is that all of these giant empty buildings cost money to build and the investors still want to get their money back.

99 points by tmlee 11y ago

I saw a documentary once about two ghost cities, the documentary was 6 years old and those cites were almost with 0 resident, I saw on comment Chinese people saying that those cities are full now. It's just China being two steps forward.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
Most Chinese are fairly nationalistic. They're not going to complain about this to a foreign documentarian, especially if there's political reprisal for criticizing the one-party regime that runs everything. This is why stuff like this is important. We get a view behind the propaganda veil. The narrative of "See, we planned ahead all is good," is questionable especially considering their recent stock market and economic woes.
- Mimick 11y ago
  Actually not really, on the documentary everyone complained... even a guy working with the government and specially on real estate. It's more like TV channels and newspaper trying to give you news that blew your mind, 2010s marketing = WTF effect.
nbevans 11y ago
I think I saw the same documentary. They are only ghost cities for so long. Then the government "seeds" the city by moving some public sector offices there (which in China could mean 100,000+ workers). That alone is enough to kick start the city into life.
- Mimick 11y ago
  The thing is that not like those cities are cheap to get an apartment in... China is more like still having a resident problem than a first world problem of ghost cities.
npalli 11y ago
This is exactly why the Baidu study is important. China is so big and data quality so poor that you can create your own version of ghost city narrative ("big crash" or "people moving in no worries" etc.) by selecting 10 cities. Even looking at things at a gross level ("cement/steel consumed") can only hint at the massive over-investment in property. Even the govt. is probably not sure.
josefresco 11y ago
Aren't the "ghost cities" really investment properties for wealthier Chinese living in the cities? I seem to remember reading that there's a lack of diverse investment opportunities, so many invest in condos that they'll never use/inhabit. Maybe this is the precursor to the next step of "seeding"?
- bpolverini 11y ago
  Partly, but it is primarily to bring those living in rural areas into an urban context as a mechanism for modernizing the economy. Right now, under the hukou system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system), you can't just move anywhere you want. What ends up happening is those living in rural areas illegally move to cities like Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen for work, but can't get their children educated or get healthcare. This is a way to prevent mass migration to the first-tier cities.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

happywolf 11y ago

I would treat anything from Baidu with a grain of salt, mainly Baidu is not the most technical competent company, even among Chinese companies. There are other researches on ghost cities using methods like at night counting the number of units with lights on and do this for consequtive n nights, or measure the total power consumption over a period of time.

hodder 11y ago
What makes you say Baidu is not technically competent? Andrew Ng's work alone seems to be on the cutting edge of machine learning and voice/image recognition. While Andrew Ng's work gets a lot of press, there appears to be other interesting work coming out of Baidu in O2O, search, wiki, image,video, self driving cars etc. They also appear to be a well run business as evidenced by rapid revenue and earnings growth for over a decade. I'm biased as a BIDU shareholder, but that is precisely why I'm interested in your critism.
- Retric 11y ago
  Without massive support from the Chinese government they would get crushed. That's not the environment that breeds competence.
  - sbilstein 11y ago
    Huh? The Chinese govt is known for not allowing foreign web companies lots of freedom to compete but there are certainly domestic search engines to compete with. Baidu has about 71% share of the search market in China.
- hueving 11y ago
  They exist primarily because competition was pushed out by the government.
- happywolf 11y ago
  Simple. Did you actually use Baidu? I do, on a regular basis. Let me elaborate Andrew Ng no doubt is a famous researcher, but I am talking about a common user's experience, and no, I don't see anything that reminds of machine learning while using Baidu services. To give you an example, search for 'Windows 7' in Baidu. Here is the screen capture of the results I got (http://imgur.com/nNBSo3g http://imgur.com/nNBSo3g), basically there is no mention of Microsoft's site. I do see the first is the link for people download this software for free. Ok, where is the machine learning? There could be a few reasons explaining this behavior, but I don't wish to go into those. To say the least: if it is not technical issue, it is ethical. Both are very important to shareholders. As a control, I searched for the same on Google, and the first 2 results are from wikipedia, while the rest are from microsoft.com, mixed with news results from news sites, which are very to the point. Another example, Baidu's SDK has opened up security holes up to 100 million Android devices (http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/02/bunk-baidu-sdk-puts-backdoor-on-millions-of-android-devices/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/02/bunk-baidu-sdk-puts-backd...), and unfortunately, this isn't the first incident in 2015. As far as I can recall, there are at least 3-4 similar issues, unintentionally or intentionally caused by technical incompetency. Disclosure: I worked in China for some time and now still got business connection with it. I am not an armchair warrior to bash China.

zero-rated 11y ago

Sort of like how "ghost HN users" who keep voting qz.com stories to the front page are kept secret?

wahsd 11y ago

I would like to just say that Quarz is SUCH A GREAT new journalism portal. It seems to strike a solid balance of covering major global developments by touching on a linchpin issue and describing that aspect thoroughly and in an easy to understand manner.

schainks 11y ago

I'll dispute one data point on that map: Xiaoshan, just across the Qiantang river from Hangzhou. I lived there from 2009-2010. When I moved there it had recently been renamed/rezoned into Xiaoshan District of Hangzhou city. So technically, Xiaoshan is not a city anymore. Also, despite an obvious wealth gap between new developments and "older" parts of southern Xiaoshan, the place was still _teeming_ with people as Chinese cities do. Xiaoshan had its own local and high-speed rail stations, too. Let's paint a brief picture of this place for your procrastination pleasure ;) I’m excerpting a couple things from my journal, and this is the tip of the iceberg of what I experienced there. What Xiaoshan is not: miles of high rises with no one there like other “ghost cities”. It is instead an old farming "city" with a new high-rises and pavement slowly taking over from the north. Central Xiaoshan is where the meld is happening. On the outskirts of Xiaoshan district, pockets of new developments and factories pepper farmlands like little islands. Joining them together was a network of new, large expressways with huge road-side billboards boasting the new “zhejiang high technology hub”. As one cabbie explained to me about 10 months into my stay, “15 years ago this entire place was rice fields”. He struggled to adapt to modern life so quickly, and knew he had to for his family. Another cabbie having a harder time adjusting actually called me a “white monster” and pleaded I don’t any marry locals or else I'll bring bad luck to their families. The only time Xiaoshan felt "ghost" was on these outskirts of these “islands" where developments abruptly ended and turned into farmland that was scheduled to be converted soon. Roads suddenly disappeared. Storefronts and commercial buildings vanished. High rises gave way to farms and shanty towns that housed pockets of people living in extraordinarily poor conditions compared to what was half a mile away. People without reliable tap water and electricity, while I lived in a new high rise less than 2 miles away. My old bosses thought it would be cheeky to house me in a new apartment building named after a famous US State. This building was actually a de-facto high-end local brothel on the edge of the central Xiaoshan “island”. Late night this place was a Chinese version of Animal House. I'll leave the details out here, but this building was lawless. Literally - the police handled _nothing_ that happened there and were probably paid to stay away. The apartment building was also attached to a mega-mall that was mostly empty all the time. There was a spanking new digital projection movie theater with 500 seats, a huge KTV, a few struggling restaurants, every luxury brand store you can think of, and typical department store wares. Movie nights were interesting. The theater attendance was so low, I’d often be the only person in a theater with a 70 foot screen all to myself. Sometimes the staff would hang with me to watch movies b/c they had jack else to do. Foreign movies were censored in weird ways: I distinctly remember how the audio in Iron Man 2 would always mute the word "Russia". Every time Ivan Vanko's spoke in Russian, the Chinese subtitles would say he’s speaking Afghani - no mentioning of Russia/Russian allowed, apparently! I couldn’t read fast enough to know if the dialogue was translated correctly, though. Among the “islands" between Xiaoshan and the river also lay fabric and electronics factories, and compounds for communities of the very wealthy. One of the best private schools in all of Zhejiang sat in the middle of a high rise neighbourhood of shiny, expensive new buildings. 15 minutes away, Cisco had a two tower office complex seemingly in the middle of nowhere full of people who lived nearby. Hop on the freeway, drive past Alibaba HQ (which employs thousands), take the bridge across the river, and you're dropped into downtown Hangzhou, which is still being altered to accomodate larger traffic flow. Xiaoshan was hardly ghost, but had pockets of activity. Sparse is probably what you would call Xiaoshan. Ride the bus from central Xiaoshan through these “islands” of factory workers and technology, and you see a very dramatic picture of China moving at full tilt. Xiaoshan was developed very quickly and continues to do what "new" developments in China do: grow fast and grow big. Many of the "new rich" residents quickly moved to this district as it rose to escape crowded downdown. The local government is very focused on turning Hangzhou into a large metropolis similar in scope to Shanghai. They have a ton of land to work with still. If I ever go back one day, I’ll probably have trouble recognising the place. So no, Xiaoshan is hardly a ghost city. Btw, the G20 next year will be in Hangzhou. Wouldn't be surprised if Xiaoshan shows up again soon! Edit: cleaned up my writing a bit.

Torgo 11y ago

Is it possible for a foreigner to travel to these cities and take pictures?

schainks 11y ago
Absolutely! I used to live in one of those "cities". Just wrote a post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10515003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10515003

kelvin0 11y ago

Hey, isn't there a refugee Crysis in Europe? How about filling up these ghost towns with actual people in dire need of shelter and other basic necessities?

razhang 11y ago
That’s totally no problem, if those people have money, or else you know…
mastax 11y ago
China also has (hundreds of millions) of incredibly poor people who would like to live in one of these ghost cities. The problem is that all of these giant empty buildings cost money to build and the investors still want to get their money back.