7 ms·

I’m not a big fan of centrally planned cities, but this author has it out for China. The original articles about “China’a ghost town” were also not true. A narr

I’m not a big fan of centrally planned cities, but this author has it out for China. The original articles about “China’a ghost town” were also not true. A narrative was invented to sell an interesting story about some failure of China... this article is a non-story, and just an attempt to revive a topic parroted since the last decade. Many of China’s urban districts were centrally planned and sat empty before they were eventually filled, including the famous Pudong district of Shanghai. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2018/03/19/ghost-towns-or-boomtowns-what-new-cities-really-become/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepar... "If you look around, you will think this is a normal city and just assume this is the way it always was, not knowing that 10 years ago people were calling it a ghost city, 20 years ago it was just apartments and villages." https://www.google.com/amp/amp.abc.net.au/article/9912186 https://www.google.com/amp/amp.abc.net.au/article/9912186 Short story is some developments work, others don’t, but investing in real estate is one way for people to park money so people still end up buying up all the properties.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ilamont 8y ago
Quoting from Caixing Global, a PRC-based financial news source: China Investment Network, a business newspaper in Beijing, released a "ghost town index" to determine which cities were, well, the most ghostly. The newspaper devised its index using a government standard that says cities should have 10,000 people per square kilometer. The editors at China Investment Network determined that if a city's ratio of people to area was 0.5 – that is, it was half full – then it is a ghost town. To take the example a step further, if a city had a ratio of .10, then it had one-tenth the population the government thought it deserved. Based on this approach, at least 50 Chinese cities fit the description of "ghost town." (1) This report is from 2014, so maybe some of those cities were eventually filled ... but surely not all of them. 1. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2014-10-17/graphics-ghost-towns-101012983.html https://www.caixinglobal.com/2014-10-17/graphics-ghost-towns...
- asah 8y ago
  By that definition, Chicago, Miami and Philadelphia are "ghost towns" with less than 5,000 people/sqkm source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
  - kevingadd 8y ago
    You can find many sources complaining about this in the US, yes. Real estate speculation, etc. People aren't happy about it, so that description is not unreasonable. Some cities are trying to pass laws to address it (not that those laws seem to work). The density of construction matters a lot here too. Many US cities like the ones you mention were not planned out and are subject to sprawl.
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    The number naturally has to be adjusted when trying to define 'ghost town' in America or anywhere else because relatively few places are built to be as dense as 10k/km^2.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- luckylion 8y ago
  Wow, 10,000 per km² sounds crazy ambitious. By those standards, Germany is a ghost land, cities here barely reach those numbers in the densely populated parts, certainly not on average.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    Keep in mind they are built out for that density, having comparably much less density (much closer to a German small town) before development.
    - ASalazarMX 8y ago
      Berlin has 3,944 inhabitants per km2. If not even that city reaches the standard, I think the criteria must be flawed. My city is the third largest in Mexico and it has less than 3500/km2. Or maybe we need an article about ghost countries.
calimac 8y ago
Citing propaganda to support your position gasliting the article as propaganda. Got it.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Actually, most of those ghost towns were real, and many are still basically ghost towns (eg Ordos new town district, which might come back when coal is great again; and then we have Tianjin’s financial district, but derelict buildings is nothing new for tianjin). Speculating on property is a horrible way to go about development. Building a new district in a second or third tier that is then speculatively bought out by rich city investors with the idea that there are lot of millionaire farmers who will relocate there later is just plain idiotic.
- twelvechairs 8y ago
  While very true, I don't think this criticism is really the important point. The rapid pace of Chinese urbanisation and economic advance from such a low base has meant China's development has been necessarily highly speculative. There have been huge wins on projects that in the west would look absurd, as well as huge losses. What you also have to remember is that the state has a huge interest to keep construction happening as its one of the biggest employing industries. However development is trending now overall towards a more mature western approach. Big developers are more experienced. Unmet demand it not as massive as before. And wages are rising. The ridiculous projects are reducing in pace and being more carefully organised.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    Oh, we all are aware that construction is a huge jobs program, and that most of these buildings are going to be torn down after 20-30 years of use, since Chinese construction using concrete and cheap labor necessarily requires overbuilding that makes proper maintenance very expensive. Local governments see this as a feature, since every new building is more GDP, even demolition of the previous building is added GDP they can report to central. A lot of the speculation will have to fall off. A good old fashioned property bust would do wonders to correct all the distortions in the market, but the central government keeps doubling down on more.
    - A2017U1 8y ago
      Call me a wowser but I far prefer a country whose big government employment program is building housing and not building armies that are ten times the size of all the largest other armies combined. That's a nation with a very big unused hammer adventuring around the world looking for a nail.
coldtea 8y ago
>I’m not a big fan of centrally planned cities, but this author has it out for China. Well, it is the NYT, after all. Did anyone expect subtlety? It's basically how the US elites see the world, and in this case, the competitor du jour.
- cycrutchfield 8y ago
  Care to add something more substantive to the conversation?
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Well, to me, this is the most substantive bit -- just not the most pertinent to the details of the story, as it goes beyond the story. The specific story or framing is seldom the most important think to discuss, compared to the story behind the story, the motives, who profits, the politics behind it being written, and so on. Else we let ourselves being led by the nose by those framing a narrative.
lvs 8y ago
I've seen some of the massive empty developments myself. Not the city written about here.
duxup 8y ago
I think you can fairly report on a ghost town and call it a ghost town if it is one at the time.... even if it fills later. And I think you can question later such places later and their debt ... and not "has it out for China". An article someone doesn't like doesn't mean they "has it out for China".
baybal2 8y ago
I visited the city last year, out of curiosity. Binhai is far from being exceptional from other abandoned "new areas." Even in 20m people Shenzhen, a lot of new skyscrapers are empty. A girl I tried to date last year was running a chemical company in Ningbo's "new area." I went there too. It blew my mind that her company was occupying a whole floor in a 30 storey building, and was one of only two tenants. And that was only after the local government gave them a $3m endorsement. The girl latter tearfully admitted to misspelling her age in Tinder by a whopping 3 years, and I moved on :) What the article underlines well, and say what other don't is that there is a positive feedback loop: 1. Banks are given political directives to dish out loans to all those "new areas" 2. Developers than rent extremely overpriced land from municipalities, and build similarly overpriced highrises/elite hotels/luxury malls 3. A great lot of that real estate is then unloaded, and leased away to no-name municipality's own asset management companies at laughably low rate. 4. Whatever money that was not banged away immediately, ends up in same banks after a few years. 5. On the paper, the value of those skyscrapers goes up! 6. Read Marx and profit... In essence, the state cashed out a substantial portion of the People Bank of China without anybody noticing as sum on their balance sheet was seemingly not influenced. The problem of China 20 years ago - a lot of underused rural land The problem of China now - a lot of underused prime rib real estate
- bluedino 8y ago
  We have a plant/office in Ningbo. It's 5 stories, however only the first floor is used. There is a server room on the second floor. Very odd.
- okmokmz 8y ago
  >The girl latter tearfully admitted to misspelling her age in Tinder by a whopping 3 years, and I moved on :) What a weird thing to include...
reaperducer 8y ago
The original articles about “China’a ghost town” were also not true. I've seen news reports on NHK showing Chinese ghost cities. One was a very long (maybe an hour) documentary that also included the ghost villages happening because people are being forced to move to the cities.
- gthtjtkt 8y ago
  Yeah, I watch a few YouTube channels of Americans in China and the ghost towns are still everywhere. Their buildings in general also seems to be of extremely poor quality, but it's one of those topics that's socially unacceptable to discuss. Here's a recent example: https://youtu.be/XopSDJq6w8E https://youtu.be/XopSDJq6w8E
  - bgee 8y ago
    > but it's one of those topics that's socially unacceptable to discuss. What? What's the definition for "socially unacceptable" here? I have always seen news articles discussing the poor build quality in China, here are some examples [0][1]. Here's a discussion on Zhihu (Quora copycat) on house build quality too [2]. [0]: https://cj.sina.com.cn/article/detail/2381596945/79395?cid=60101&cre=cj https://cj.sina.com.cn/article/detail/2381596945/79395?cid=6... [1]: https://house.ifeng.com/column/news/jianzhushouming/index.shtml https://house.ifeng.com/column/news/jianzhushouming/index.sh... [2]: https://www.zhihu.com/question/19641156 https://www.zhihu.com/question/19641156
    - gthtjtkt 8y ago
      Wow, you found some discussions on the internet where anyone can find discussions about literally anything. I'm convinced! /s
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
gthtjtkt 8y ago
> The original articles about “China’a ghost town” were also not true. They're 100% true and many of them are still ghost towns, unless you listen to the Chinese government (which is desperately trying to convince you otherwise).
Barrin92 8y ago
>Short story is some developments work, others don’t This is the key point because the goal of these (over)-ambitious projects never was 100% allocation efficiency. It's much more comparable to the era of America's railroad tycoons than it is to economic development as we're accustomed to. There's a relatively huge degree of waste, corruption and whatnot, but the goal isn't efficiency, it's effectiveness. Through these projects, even if a portion is ill-conceived, China is able to rapidly urbanise, avoid many of the pitfalls in regions with more incremental approaches, and also builds construction and planning knowledge (this one is very important) and finds a pathway for its export surplus. It's the same approach China has taken to its tech industry. Is a lot of funding going to bogus projects? Yes, but they can afford it, and even if only a fraction pay off they'll consider it a win. Is it slightly mad to treat building a city like a VC investment? Sure, but then building company towns and new settlements and railroads seemingly randomly through a country was as well. And yet, when it works and it creates one new hub of innovation, it pays a hundred times over.
jonathankoren 8y ago
> I’m not a big fan of centrally planned cities, but this author has it out for China. The original articles about “China’a ghost town” were also not true. I'm sorry, but this isn't true, and I say this from my own experience repeatedly visiting Dalian over the past seven years. My last trip was 2016. Dalian's government is heavily promoting the East Harbor district. They've built a lot of skycrapers, a newly built "financial convention center"[0], a Vegas-style musical water fountain, and oddly enough, a small area modeled after old Venetian neighborhood[1] complete with canals and gondolas. I've visited the East Harbor twice in three years. It's empty. The street lights barely work. The skycrapers are dark or unfinished. The Venetian neighborhood is is blocks of completely empty buildings. Most of these storefronts were clearly never rented, as evidenced by their completely unfinished interiors. Of the ones that were rented, there's closed coffee shop (signs are still in the window), and a closed restaurant. What does exist in this maybe square kilometer or 2 is (and I believe this list is complete), a "western style" international kindergarten / preschool, and a wedding photography studio, and a stand to rent a gondola ride. That's it. You will find as many couples getting their wedding photos taken in this neighborhood as you will tourists. (It's very photogenic neighborhood, especially at night.) Other parts of the city also have empty apartment buildings, but I want to focus on the East Harbor, because it's a good microcosm of the ghost town phenomena. At the end of the article, the chief executive the Tianjin Juilliard School is quoted as saying something rather insightful. “I think they are looking at this as a feather in the cap of this new project.” I think he's right. There's a very strong political component to the promotion and construction of these districts. It's a lot like shipping dubious feature all in the quest for showing "impact" at a FAANG. Dalian's East Harbor is recently reclaimed land, and is being actively promoted (Including by the army showing up and evicting businesses in the middle of the day.[2]), as an alternative to already built and successful Xinghai Square[3] district. Xinghai Square had a fountain, but then it was ordered destroyed, to promote East Harbor. The huabiao in the center of the square, was demolished in the middle of the night. Streetlights are being turned off at night. The neighborhood is being actively sabotaged in an effort to migrate the population to the empty East Harbor district. Why would this happen? Well, the Xinghai was developed by former mayor and Xi Jingping rival, Bo Xilai. (Bo Xilai is now in jail on corruption charges.) The conventional wisdom is that East Harbor's promotion and the destruction of Xinghai is serving two purposes. It shows political fielty by carrying out a damnatio memoriae on a political rival of the new president for life, while also demonstrating the new mayor's economic "impact". This is what's going on across the country. It's as obvious. It's as obvious as 10 city blocks of empty 50 story buildings. [0] http://en.yifang.cn/2017/group_new_0224/72.html http://en.yifang.cn/2017/group_new_0224/72.html [1] http://www.yunnanadventure.com/show/Dalian-builds-%22Oriental-City-of-Canals%22_4430.html http://www.yunnanadventure.com/show/Dalian-builds-%22Orienta... [2] Yeah, that happened at a rather nice indoor swimming pool / fitness center my in-laws frequented, while they were there. [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinghai_Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinghai_Square
thaumasiotes 8y ago
> Many of China’s urban districts were centrally planned and sat empty before they were eventually filled, including the famous Pudong district of Shanghai. I think it's kind of funny to call pudong an "urban district". It is one, but it feels much more suburban than puxi. It has the skyscrapers, but it's characterized by wider roads, sparser buildings, and much more view of the sky. I think of "urban" as connoting denser buildings.
akira2501 8y ago
> they were eventually filled Which may or may not be true, but what you really want to know is what is the total value of property there vs. the total value of loans issued against it. If they were only able to fill it by exploiting favorable central bank policies, all they've done is kick the can down the road.
ngokevin 8y ago
Honestly, I think most American media has it out for China. Which results in the people having it out for China. Which results in like Redditors spamming Tiananmen Square on any thread involving China or even things like Epic Games who merely has investment from China.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ilamont 8y ago

Quoting from Caixing Global, a PRC-based financial news source: China Investment Network, a business newspaper in Beijing, released a "ghost town index" to determine which cities were, well, the most ghostly. The newspaper devised its index using a government standard that says cities should have 10,000 people per square kilometer. The editors at China Investment Network determined that if a city's ratio of people to area was 0.5 – that is, it was half full – then it is a ghost town. To take the example a step further, if a city had a ratio of .10, then it had one-tenth the population the government thought it deserved. Based on this approach, at least 50 Chinese cities fit the description of "ghost town." (1) This report is from 2014, so maybe some of those cities were eventually filled ... but surely not all of them. 1. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2014-10-17/graphics-ghost-towns-101012983.html https://www.caixinglobal.com/2014-10-17/graphics-ghost-towns...

asah 8y ago
By that definition, Chicago, Miami and Philadelphia are "ghost towns" with less than 5,000 people/sqkm source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
- kevingadd 8y ago
  You can find many sources complaining about this in the US, yes. Real estate speculation, etc. People aren't happy about it, so that description is not unreasonable. Some cities are trying to pass laws to address it (not that those laws seem to work). The density of construction matters a lot here too. Many US cities like the ones you mention were not planned out and are subject to sprawl.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  The number naturally has to be adjusted when trying to define 'ghost town' in America or anywhere else because relatively few places are built to be as dense as 10k/km^2.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
luckylion 8y ago
Wow, 10,000 per km² sounds crazy ambitious. By those standards, Germany is a ghost land, cities here barely reach those numbers in the densely populated parts, certainly not on average.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Keep in mind they are built out for that density, having comparably much less density (much closer to a German small town) before development.
  - ASalazarMX 8y ago
    Berlin has 3,944 inhabitants per km2. If not even that city reaches the standard, I think the criteria must be flawed. My city is the third largest in Mexico and it has less than 3500/km2. Or maybe we need an article about ghost countries.

calimac 8y ago

Citing propaganda to support your position gasliting the article as propaganda. Got it.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

Actually, most of those ghost towns were real, and many are still basically ghost towns (eg Ordos new town district, which might come back when coal is great again; and then we have Tianjin’s financial district, but derelict buildings is nothing new for tianjin). Speculating on property is a horrible way to go about development. Building a new district in a second or third tier that is then speculatively bought out by rich city investors with the idea that there are lot of millionaire farmers who will relocate there later is just plain idiotic.

twelvechairs 8y ago
While very true, I don't think this criticism is really the important point. The rapid pace of Chinese urbanisation and economic advance from such a low base has meant China's development has been necessarily highly speculative. There have been huge wins on projects that in the west would look absurd, as well as huge losses. What you also have to remember is that the state has a huge interest to keep construction happening as its one of the biggest employing industries. However development is trending now overall towards a more mature western approach. Big developers are more experienced. Unmet demand it not as massive as before. And wages are rising. The ridiculous projects are reducing in pace and being more carefully organised.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Oh, we all are aware that construction is a huge jobs program, and that most of these buildings are going to be torn down after 20-30 years of use, since Chinese construction using concrete and cheap labor necessarily requires overbuilding that makes proper maintenance very expensive. Local governments see this as a feature, since every new building is more GDP, even demolition of the previous building is added GDP they can report to central. A lot of the speculation will have to fall off. A good old fashioned property bust would do wonders to correct all the distortions in the market, but the central government keeps doubling down on more.
  - A2017U1 8y ago
    Call me a wowser but I far prefer a country whose big government employment program is building housing and not building armies that are ten times the size of all the largest other armies combined. That's a nation with a very big unused hammer adventuring around the world looking for a nail.

coldtea 8y ago

>I’m not a big fan of centrally planned cities, but this author has it out for China. Well, it is the NYT, after all. Did anyone expect subtlety? It's basically how the US elites see the world, and in this case, the competitor du jour.

cycrutchfield 8y ago
Care to add something more substantive to the conversation?
- coldtea 8y ago
  Well, to me, this is the most substantive bit -- just not the most pertinent to the details of the story, as it goes beyond the story. The specific story or framing is seldom the most important think to discuss, compared to the story behind the story, the motives, who profits, the politics behind it being written, and so on. Else we let ourselves being led by the nose by those framing a narrative.

lvs 8y ago

I've seen some of the massive empty developments myself. Not the city written about here.

duxup 8y ago

I think you can fairly report on a ghost town and call it a ghost town if it is one at the time.... even if it fills later. And I think you can question later such places later and their debt ... and not "has it out for China". An article someone doesn't like doesn't mean they "has it out for China".

baybal2 8y ago

I visited the city last year, out of curiosity. Binhai is far from being exceptional from other abandoned "new areas." Even in 20m people Shenzhen, a lot of new skyscrapers are empty. A girl I tried to date last year was running a chemical company in Ningbo's "new area." I went there too. It blew my mind that her company was occupying a whole floor in a 30 storey building, and was one of only two tenants. And that was only after the local government gave them a $3m endorsement. The girl latter tearfully admitted to misspelling her age in Tinder by a whopping 3 years, and I moved on :) What the article underlines well, and say what other don't is that there is a positive feedback loop: 1. Banks are given political directives to dish out loans to all those "new areas" 2. Developers than rent extremely overpriced land from municipalities, and build similarly overpriced highrises/elite hotels/luxury malls 3. A great lot of that real estate is then unloaded, and leased away to no-name municipality's own asset management companies at laughably low rate. 4. Whatever money that was not banged away immediately, ends up in same banks after a few years. 5. On the paper, the value of those skyscrapers goes up! 6. Read Marx and profit... In essence, the state cashed out a substantial portion of the People Bank of China without anybody noticing as sum on their balance sheet was seemingly not influenced. The problem of China 20 years ago - a lot of underused rural land The problem of China now - a lot of underused prime rib real estate

bluedino 8y ago
We have a plant/office in Ningbo. It's 5 stories, however only the first floor is used. There is a server room on the second floor. Very odd.
okmokmz 8y ago
>The girl latter tearfully admitted to misspelling her age in Tinder by a whopping 3 years, and I moved on :) What a weird thing to include...

reaperducer 8y ago

The original articles about “China’a ghost town” were also not true. I've seen news reports on NHK showing Chinese ghost cities. One was a very long (maybe an hour) documentary that also included the ghost villages happening because people are being forced to move to the cities.

gthtjtkt 8y ago
Yeah, I watch a few YouTube channels of Americans in China and the ghost towns are still everywhere. Their buildings in general also seems to be of extremely poor quality, but it's one of those topics that's socially unacceptable to discuss. Here's a recent example: https://youtu.be/XopSDJq6w8E https://youtu.be/XopSDJq6w8E
- bgee 8y ago
  > but it's one of those topics that's socially unacceptable to discuss. What? What's the definition for "socially unacceptable" here? I have always seen news articles discussing the poor build quality in China, here are some examples [0][1]. Here's a discussion on Zhihu (Quora copycat) on house build quality too [2]. [0]: https://cj.sina.com.cn/article/detail/2381596945/79395?cid=60101&cre=cj https://cj.sina.com.cn/article/detail/2381596945/79395?cid=6... [1]: https://house.ifeng.com/column/news/jianzhushouming/index.shtml https://house.ifeng.com/column/news/jianzhushouming/index.sh... [2]: https://www.zhihu.com/question/19641156 https://www.zhihu.com/question/19641156
  - gthtjtkt 8y ago
    Wow, you found some discussions on the internet where anyone can find discussions about literally anything. I'm convinced! /s
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

gthtjtkt 8y ago

> The original articles about “China’a ghost town” were also not true. They're 100% true and many of them are still ghost towns, unless you listen to the Chinese government (which is desperately trying to convince you otherwise).

Barrin92 8y ago

>Short story is some developments work, others don’t This is the key point because the goal of these (over)-ambitious projects never was 100% allocation efficiency. It's much more comparable to the era of America's railroad tycoons than it is to economic development as we're accustomed to. There's a relatively huge degree of waste, corruption and whatnot, but the goal isn't efficiency, it's effectiveness. Through these projects, even if a portion is ill-conceived, China is able to rapidly urbanise, avoid many of the pitfalls in regions with more incremental approaches, and also builds construction and planning knowledge (this one is very important) and finds a pathway for its export surplus. It's the same approach China has taken to its tech industry. Is a lot of funding going to bogus projects? Yes, but they can afford it, and even if only a fraction pay off they'll consider it a win. Is it slightly mad to treat building a city like a VC investment? Sure, but then building company towns and new settlements and railroads seemingly randomly through a country was as well. And yet, when it works and it creates one new hub of innovation, it pays a hundred times over.

jonathankoren 8y ago

> I’m not a big fan of centrally planned cities, but this author has it out for China. The original articles about “China’a ghost town” were also not true. I'm sorry, but this isn't true, and I say this from my own experience repeatedly visiting Dalian over the past seven years. My last trip was 2016. Dalian's government is heavily promoting the East Harbor district. They've built a lot of skycrapers, a newly built "financial convention center"[0], a Vegas-style musical water fountain, and oddly enough, a small area modeled after old Venetian neighborhood[1] complete with canals and gondolas. I've visited the East Harbor twice in three years. It's empty. The street lights barely work. The skycrapers are dark or unfinished. The Venetian neighborhood is is blocks of completely empty buildings. Most of these storefronts were clearly never rented, as evidenced by their completely unfinished interiors. Of the ones that were rented, there's closed coffee shop (signs are still in the window), and a closed restaurant. What does exist in this maybe square kilometer or 2 is (and I believe this list is complete), a "western style" international kindergarten / preschool, and a wedding photography studio, and a stand to rent a gondola ride. That's it. You will find as many couples getting their wedding photos taken in this neighborhood as you will tourists. (It's very photogenic neighborhood, especially at night.) Other parts of the city also have empty apartment buildings, but I want to focus on the East Harbor, because it's a good microcosm of the ghost town phenomena. At the end of the article, the chief executive the Tianjin Juilliard School is quoted as saying something rather insightful. “I think they are looking at this as a feather in the cap of this new project.” I think he's right. There's a very strong political component to the promotion and construction of these districts. It's a lot like shipping dubious feature all in the quest for showing "impact" at a FAANG. Dalian's East Harbor is recently reclaimed land, and is being actively promoted (Including by the army showing up and evicting businesses in the middle of the day.[2]), as an alternative to already built and successful Xinghai Square[3] district. Xinghai Square had a fountain, but then it was ordered destroyed, to promote East Harbor. The huabiao in the center of the square, was demolished in the middle of the night. Streetlights are being turned off at night. The neighborhood is being actively sabotaged in an effort to migrate the population to the empty East Harbor district. Why would this happen? Well, the Xinghai was developed by former mayor and Xi Jingping rival, Bo Xilai. (Bo Xilai is now in jail on corruption charges.) The conventional wisdom is that East Harbor's promotion and the destruction of Xinghai is serving two purposes. It shows political fielty by carrying out a damnatio memoriae on a political rival of the new president for life, while also demonstrating the new mayor's economic "impact". This is what's going on across the country. It's as obvious. It's as obvious as 10 city blocks of empty 50 story buildings. [0] http://en.yifang.cn/2017/group_new_0224/72.html http://en.yifang.cn/2017/group_new_0224/72.html [1] http://www.yunnanadventure.com/show/Dalian-builds-%22Oriental-City-of-Canals%22_4430.html http://www.yunnanadventure.com/show/Dalian-builds-%22Orienta... [2] Yeah, that happened at a rather nice indoor swimming pool / fitness center my in-laws frequented, while they were there. [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinghai_Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinghai_Square

thaumasiotes 8y ago

> Many of China’s urban districts were centrally planned and sat empty before they were eventually filled, including the famous Pudong district of Shanghai. I think it's kind of funny to call pudong an "urban district". It is one, but it feels much more suburban than puxi. It has the skyscrapers, but it's characterized by wider roads, sparser buildings, and much more view of the sky. I think of "urban" as connoting denser buildings.

akira2501 8y ago

> they were eventually filled Which may or may not be true, but what you really want to know is what is the total value of property there vs. the total value of loans issued against it. If they were only able to fill it by exploiting favorable central bank policies, all they've done is kick the can down the road.

ngokevin 8y ago

Honestly, I think most American media has it out for China. Which results in the people having it out for China. Which results in like Redditors spamming Tiananmen Square on any thread involving China or even things like Epic Games who merely has investment from China.