The Celestial Empire is a densely populated and largest state on earth. Overpopulation forced the authorities to resort to introducing birth restrictions, which are fixed by federal laws. New cities and towns are constantly being built in China. They have impressive sizes, everything is thought out to the smallest detail. But no one lives in them. This is a paradoxical fact of construction. The article will look at ghost towns in China.
What empty cities in China are known about?
Let's get acquainted with the most interesting ghostly areas of the Celestial Empire.
- In the suburbs of Dai there is the city of Xishuan, which is located on an area of over 20 square meters. km. It was built over many years, creating an excellent infrastructure. But for decades, about 70% of the area has been empty. That's why it's called a ghost town. The cost of real estate in this area is 4 times lower than in neighboring Shenzhen. The Chinese purchased real estate, but as an investment in the hope that after some time the prices for apartments would rise significantly. The apartment owners themselves do not go there to live, they only sometimes stop by to check if everything is in order with their property.
In recent years, prices have almost doubled. One square meter will cost 5,000 yuan, which is about $714. The area resembles an area that has experienced an epidemic, with only a small number of the population remaining alive. Occasionally you can see light in the windows of high-rise buildings.
- There is the largest ghost district in the city of Shenzhou. Construction began in 2003. The occupied area is 150 square meters. This is not the first year that it has been populated by less than 40%.
“The data was leaked to the funds mass media. A representative of the local government denied this information, saying that the city's population is 300 thousand. Which is 7.5% of the planned number by 2020. According to the project, at least 4 million people should live there.”
- Kangbashi could accommodate more than a million Chinese residents. It was planned that it would serve as an urbanization zone for peasants. But, having no prospects, the Chinese moved to other areas. It is unknown when the city will be populated.
- Tianducheng contains a replica of the Eiffel Tower. But it was not even remotely possible to make Paris. The cost of real estate is high. There is no infrastructure. A few Chinese are trying to survive here by planting plantations right next to the monuments.
- Thames Town was intended to expand Shanghai. But due to a designer’s mistake, many buildings were built as one-story buildings. This contradicted the main idea of the authorities, who intended to settle in the city a large number of residents. Now only 10% of the area is inhabited. In the photo the area looks monotonous.
Why are dead cities created?
Satellite dishes record ghost towns being built every year. They include office buildings, government buildings, stadiums, high-rise buildings, towers, and parks. They all have one thing in common – the absence of people. Only construction crews and officials move on the roads. At first glance, the situation is reminiscent of the Pripyat nuclear disaster, when citizens had to leave all their houses. But you can live in these places. All the necessary infrastructure is available here. The houses are built according to a modern design and equipped with everything necessary for living.
The development of the project and the construction of the city cost large sums - billions of dollars. It looks suspicious that such settlements are located far from trade routes, enterprises, in the most unfavorable and poorly developed areas of the People's Republic of China.
Local journalists share information that there are now 20 ghost towns and 70 million empty new houses in the country. Let's look at the most popular versions of why China is building empty cities.
One of the assumptions is that the points were created as a reserve fund for China in the event of a nuclear war. Existing residential buildings will be targeted. Restoring them later is difficult, problematic and too expensive. It’s easier to build new cities with all amenities in advance and place people there if necessary.
Residents of China say that the construction of such cities is a mistake by local authorities in forecasting. The reason for this was total urbanization. The state offers favorable conditions, but why the majority of the population does not agree to move there is unknown.
Some political scientists are confident that such Chinese ghost towns are part of a grand plan for the future development of the country. The number of residents is growing rapidly, so the authorities decided to build residential centers for the future. Experts say that the country's government is investing its investments profitably - it takes care of citizens and will receive financial benefits in the future after the sale of real estate.
The next version indicates that the construction of cities is an anti-crisis measure by the Chinese authorities. In the 1930s, Roosevelt saved the United States from the Great Depression by building new schools, houses, prisons, hospitals and roads. This helped avoid unemployment and bring the country out of the crisis. But the Chinese did not wait for the disaster.
China is home to tens of millions of construction workers who need to feed their families. The country's GDP stops growing, the economy is based on borrowed funds. A crisis can come at any moment. Ghost towns will be populated by residents on alarm.
Abandoned cities of China
New cities are being built all over the country where no one lives. Some of them are not completed, others are ready to move in, but are empty. List of ghost towns:
- Kangbashi is located in Inner Mongolia. The project was drawn up from scratch; it was planned that it would be the largest city. They wanted to settle about a million Chinese here. But about 5% live.
This city is the largest. No expense was spared for its construction. Huge amounts of money have been invested, imagination. They built public gardens, fountains, parks, museums, 10 residential areas, and underground roads. But almost everywhere there is emptiness and silence.
- Ordos amazes with its purity. Instead of citizens, there are street cleaners who clean roads and sidewalks. The city was founded in 2001 on an area rich in mineral resources. Now it is home to several thousand Chinese citizens. The metropolis has many empty supermarkets, libraries, and buses.
“A local resident jokes: “What if... this is the officials’ dream. A city without people."
There are no traffic jams in this area. Buses pass along the roads, but there is no one at the stops. Nothing is known about the population; there are no official data. This place is where Mongolian Disneyland is located. There is a travel agency where employees play Angry Birds and receive a salary.
- The administration of the millionaire city of Kunming is located in Chenggong. But the area is dead. The people of China don't want to live there.
- The New City of Kilamba was designed for 500 thousand people. There is a developed infrastructure and interesting colorful houses. But no one lives in them.
- New Hebi was rebuilt thanks to the discovery of underground coal mines. But within a few years the city became populated.
- Caofeidian was planned to become a super-eco-friendly city. It was erected just a few hundred kilometers from the capital of China. The point was to use only renewable energy. Citizens must show how wonderful it is to live in an area with a clean environment. 90 billion were invested in construction. But it is still empty. In residential buildings there are empty apartments with rough finishing. The rooms are warm, the heating is on.
Conclusion
Summarizing the above, it should be noted that huge investments were made in all the abandoned and empty cities of the PRC. cash, human resources. Therefore, they are abandoned for a short period of time. It is difficult to guess what will motivate residents to settle in these places. Will the government build more ghost towns, presumably yes.
Satellite images show cities as vast apocalyptic movie sets, where nuclear war, flood or other cataclysm has wiped out all the inhabitants. All that remains are high-rise buildings, stadiums, and parks. It is also noticeable in the photo that there are almost no cars. Only 100 of them parked near the government building. There are about 64 million unoccupied houses in China.
In Soviet times, starting from the fifties, a lot of housing was built in the USSR, and at the same time there was a chronic shortage of it. A country with a population of a quarter of a billion people needed new houses, districts and even cities. At the same time and a little later, the famous “Khrushchev buildings” appeared, built using block or panel technology, modest, but giving millions of citizens the opportunity to move to a separate area and forget the hateful communal apartments, not to mention the basements. In the last decade, mass construction has been launched in the PRC, but its results are strikingly different from those in the Soviet Union. Chinese citizens do not joyfully celebrate receiving warrants, do not dance at housewarming parties, but continue to live in the same conditions as before. New houses, neighborhoods and cities are empty. Why?
Housing in China is expensive. It would be more accurate to note that it is not commensurate with the income of the average Chinese. However, this concept as such is meaningless, since the stratification of society is very great. In large cities, a highly qualified worker can receive a salary of four hundred or even five hundred dollars, but in order to get a job like this, you need to try hard. The level of education, knowledge (there is an incentive not to limit yourself to an educational institute or university program, but to comprehend science and languages on your own) and experience is important. In Shanghai (this city leads in terms of average salary in China) or Guangzhou (they also value specialists well), getting a good position, for example an export sales manager, requires knowledge of technology, two or three languages, communication skills and many other professional skills. This is what they will pay.
Income of the general public
There is no famine in China. There are enough products, and this is a huge achievement of the reform policy of the leadership of the Communist Party, which moved away from Maoism and proclaimed a course towards market development. However, peasants in China live poorly. From time to time they are invited to work in the city, where they are offered to perform simple operations at industrial enterprises for a very modest fee of literally a couple of dollars a day. This tedious and monotonous work is episodic in nature and provides an opportunity to earn “real money” and not just food. Arriving in his native village after two or three weeks, such a “shabashnik” is considered a wealthy person for some time (until the money runs out) and can even get married successfully. A Chinese coolie cannot count on buying a city apartment. This dream is unattainable.
Solvency of managers in China
Now about the mentioned middle managers. It is also unlikely that he will be able to save ten to fifteen thousand dollars for a separate, most modest apartment. In Shanghai or Guangzhou, food costs money, although it can be called moderate. In addition, housing has to be rented, and this also cuts the budget. Mortgage programs and, in general, lending programs exist, but they are no more favorable than Russian ones; the interest rates “bite”. And yet, with a lot of effort, you can realize this dream and achieve your goal, especially if you make a successful career and become a top manager. This is difficult, especially since trade and exports have fallen significantly in recent years, and earnings, like ours, are highly dependent on the volume of personal sales. Such young men and women work very diligently, they fight for every client, but it is not yet possible to see them as mass buyers of real estate.
Ghost towns
Foreigners who accidentally visit “ghost towns” are struck by many oddities here. China is a crowded country, all the cities are packed with people, but here there is silence, peace and the almost complete absence of not only residents, but also traces of their presence. Beautiful new residential high-rise buildings stand empty, with heating running in winter (obviously to avoid disastrous temperature changes) and elevators turned on. The infrastructure has also been created, the roads are smoothly paved, or the process of fine-tuning this work is underway. Another question is that all these wonders of urban civilization are located in remote northern regions, where population density has always been low, and sometimes even surrounded by desert. For example, in Inner Mongolia. There are even parks and sports facilities designed for mass visitors. Who will live here?
Defense version
The huge number of empty residential apartment buildings (in total, according to various estimates, up to 64 million) and their maintenance do not raise doubts that the government, which is investing a lot of money in all this, has some plans for numerous objects, but is in no hurry share them with the public, both Chinese and foreign. Based on this mystery, there was even an assumption that the PRC was preparing for a nuclear war, as a result of which it was ready to sacrifice large cities, but the population could be resettled here in the North. This assumption, of course, has a right to exist, but it does not seem very logical. Firstly, many millions of people need to be evacuated here, and there may not be time left for this. Secondly: what, exactly, will they do here? Sew down jackets or assemble computers? And for whom? And thirdly, it turns out that war is already very close. Why is the Chinese army so poorly prepared for it? Otherwise, houses deteriorate from standing idle for a long time...
Solution
Most likely, in this case there is a feature of Chinese national psychology, expressed, in particular, in the manner of doing business. This is how the state approach of the PRC leaders differs from the American and, alas, the Russian one. This is called the ability to see perspective. Real estate prices in China are growing quite rapidly, strategy economic development is changing in favor of increasing domestic solvency, and sooner or later all these apartments will become someone’s property. Today, one meter already costs up to five thousand yuan (more than $700), having increased by 50% in recent years. Mass construction is a forward-thinking way to invest money, rather than storing it in green American paper, with which it remains to be seen what will happen. And in the very near future.
Every year two new cities appear in China. Already now, these megacities can accommodate the entire population of Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus combined. The Chinese probably know what they are doing...
Very little information about these cities gets into the media, because this could worsen the situation in the housing market. But, despite this, specialists from Peking University were able to draw up a map showing ghost towns. Still, we decided to look at seven huge ghost towns in more detail.
Some time ago John Maynard Keynes- the famous economist proposed digging holes and filling them up again as a cure for the economic recession.
Chinese government decided to take this advice and develop it to perfection. Thus, ghost towns began to appear throughout the Celestial Empire, which helps Chinese residents solve a series of problems: unemployment dropped to 4-5% also every year many millions of peasants move to ready-made cities, constantly the local budget is replenished due to apartment sales.
But the Chinese sages did not take into account the speed of the emergence of new cities. The created cities do not have time to populate the inhabitants and the cities are empty, which brings to mind thoughts of ghostly castles.
With the advent of the financial crisis, the situation of China's ghost towns worsened as the country began producing cement in huge quantities. This process could not be stopped and therefore the state decided to continue building cities.
Yingkou
Liaoning Province is dependent on mining. Therefore, the decision was made to rebuild the economy as this would change the situation: the Chinese government directed finance into new industries, and construction companies quickly began building housing for employees. The city was built very quickly, but there are no residents in it still.
New Hebi
Hebi is the capital of Henan Province. This city existed thanks to coal mines. But after some time, a new deposit was discovered near Hebi. This prompted the city authorities to create another industrial zone - “New Hebi”. For twenty years, no one has mastered the new territory.
Thames Town
In this town it was decided to reproduce British countryside. The city was designed by an American architect Tony Mackay. Real estate was snapped up by wealthy people as worthy investments. Due to the fact that property prices in this town have increased sharply, this has scared away ordinary people, and now Thames Town is a place visited by tourists.
Tianducheng
This city is built in Zhejiang Province. This town can also be called little Paris. But unfortunately, there are no residents in this city either, despite the fact that the copy of the Eiffel Tower looks almost real.
Chenggong
The city of Chenggong was built due to the huge number of students. It was planned to build huge high-rise buildings with hundreds of thousands of residential apartments. Local residents bought most of the housing as investments, but no one chose to live here.
Caofeidian
Caofeidian was supposed to become the first super-eco-friendly city. It was built several hundred kilometers from Beijing. This city planned to use only renewable energy. The goal of the people living in this city is to show how good an environmentally friendly life is. Despite 90 billion invested in the construction of the city, it remains empty.
Ordos
Ordos - major center Autonomous Republic of Inner Mongolia. The Chinese government decided to expand the city, locating nearby new area, Kanbashi. It was expected that about a million people would live in the new area, but at the moment the population of the area is only twenty thousand.
In the first half of the 2000s, the Chinese government launched several projects to build new big cities. In this way, the country solved several problems: providing the population with work, maintaining high rates of economic growth, urbanization and modernization of the economy. Cities have been built, but residents are in no hurry to populate them; the demand for new housing does not keep pace with the supply artificially created by the state. This is how the phenomenon of Chinese ghost towns appeared.
Caofeidian
Caofeidian is located 225 kilometers southwest of Beijing. It was conceived as a large eco-friendly city. Its one and a half million inhabitants were required to use only renewable energy. At the same time, the government insisted that a large steel plant of the Shougang Group move to the city - the demography and economy of the new city were supposed to be based on this industry. According to the Wall Street Journal, $91 billion has been invested in the ambitious project over the past decade, but so far it has only brought losses. Empty streets and abandoned houses speak for themselves.
Chenggong
In 2003, the authorities decided to expand Kunming, the capital southern province Yunnan - due to the territory of Chenggong County. In seven years, an urban area with a full-fledged infrastructure was built there: residential buildings with hundreds of thousands of apartments, a school, campuses of two universities and government buildings. However, the city is not developing as expected. The Chinese buy houses in a new area, but as an investment, and do not live there themselves. The result is the same - empty campuses and deserted streets.
New Hebi
Economy of Hebi - large city in Henan Province - relies on coal mining. More than 20 years ago, the government decided to develop new deposits 40 kilometers from the historical part of the city - in the Qibin district. This is how “New Hebi” appeared - a zone occupying several hundred square kilometers, which has not been developed in 20 years.
Kanbashi
In 2004, the government decided to expand Ordos - one of major cities Autonomous Inner Mongolia - having built 20 kilometers southwest of historical center new area of Kanbashi. The new area was designed for a million people, but eight years after construction began, only people live in the city.
Yingkou
Nine years ago, Li Keqiang, then head of the Liaoning provincial party committee, launched a major project to restructure the region's economy to reduce its dependence on steel production and mining. It was assumed that the government would allocate funds for the development of new industries, and developers would build houses for new workers. Yingkou was one of the cities where construction progressed especially rapidly. At the same time, government investments did not come as quickly as the builders expected, some construction projects were frozen, and the erected buildings were never occupied.
Thames Town
In 2001, a plan was adopted to expand Shanghai. They decided to add nine smaller cities to the metropolis, four of which were built from scratch. Thames Town, an English-style town designed by architect Tony Mackay, was completed in 2006. It consists mostly of small single-family homes. The property was sold out very quickly at one time, but it was mainly bought by wealthy families as an investment or a second home. Because of this, house prices in Thames Town have skyrocketed and have put off new potential residents. It was planned that the British-style town would be populated by 10 thousand people, but in the end there were significantly fewer local residents - mostly tourists and newlyweds visit Thames Town.
Tianducheng
"Little Paris", built near Hangzhou city in the eastern province of Zhejiang, suffered the same fate as Thames Town. It was built in 2007, the city was designed for 10 thousand inhabitants, however, according to the latest data, only a fifth was filled. However, a copy of Paris is an attractive place for newlyweds: take a photo against the backdrop of a deserted square with Eiffel Tower- this will not work even in the capital of France.
Why does China build large, well-designed ghost cities that sit completely empty?
Photos from Google Earth city after city is depicted huge complexes, consisting of office skyscrapers, government buildings, residential buildings, residential towers and houses, all connected by a network of empty roads, and some of the cities are located in some of the most inhospitable places in China.
Images of these ghost towns (after countless billions of dollars spent on design and construction) show that no one lives in them.
The photos look like a giant film set, set up for the filming of some apocalyptic film in which a neutron strike or unknown natural disaster has wiped out people, leaving skyscrapers, sports stadiums, parks and roads completely untouched. One of these cities was actually built in the middle of the desert, in inner Monogolia."
Business Insider published a series of photos of these Chinese ghost towns. None of them show cars, with the exception of about 100 parked in a large vacant lot near the government building, and another one that shows beautiful park, and people added in the photo editor.
According to some estimates, there are now about 64 million empty houses in China. China is building up to 20 new ghost towns a year in its “vast areas of free land.”
Everything would be fine, but then I came across some kind of crazy explanation for this circumstance. Listen here!
At the moment, there are about 100 million-plus cities in China. And these newly built ghost towns are a reserve fund for the population. In case of war. There is no point in bombing them; there are many more important targets. And for existing residential cities there will definitely be hit, and most likely nuclear. It is expensive to restore them during the war, and such gigantic masses of people cannot be shoved through the cracks. It is much more profitable and easier to rebuild entire cities with ready-made infrastructure in advance, and at the right time to evacuate the remaining population and surviving equipment from factories and factories.
But there is one very unpleasant moment here. Keep in order.
Let's still read the real version.
Dai District, Huizhou City, Guangdong Province, covers an area of more than 20 square meters. km. Over the course of several years, it has been actively developed and has a fully formed infrastructure. However, for several years now about 70% of the living space there has been empty, which has turned it into a real “ghost town.”
According to the Chinese newspaper Daily Economic Bulletin, the new Dai district is located 70 km from the Shenzhen metropolis; literally in a matter of years it was completely built up with both residential, administrative and business buildings. However, on the wide streets between high-rise buildings it is very rare to see passers-by.
Since real estate prices in this area are 4-5 times lower than in neighboring Shenzhen, residents of the metropolis bought apartments here. But they did this solely as an investment, hoping that over time the prices for this property would rise. They themselves do not live there, they only visit occasionally.
Their assumptions turned out to be correct; over the past few years, property prices in the area have more than doubled. On average, a square meter now costs 5,000 yuan ($714).
The new city is like an area after an epidemic in which a small part of the population has survived. You can rarely see light in the windows of high-rise buildings.
“All the apartments here have been sold a long time ago, but most of the owners do not live in them. Less than 20% of the residents live here permanently,” says a security guard at one of the neighborhoods.
Local residents joke: “Nothing grows here except empty houses.”
Forensic Asia Limited in its report points out the existence of numerous empty areas in China, the so-called “ghost towns”.
The Zhengdong New Area of Shenzhou, Henan Province has been named the largest "ghost town" and a landmark area of the real estate bubble in China. The area began to be built in 2003, it covers an area of 150 square meters. km. For several years now it has been less than 40% occupied.
After this information was widely publicized in the media, a local official completely rejected it in an interview with the Chinese Business newspaper. In turn, he stated that the current occupancy rate of new buildings is 90%, and the number of residents of the Zhengdong region has already exceeded 300 thousand people.
However, according to the same authorities, more than 30% of the planned development of the area has already been built, and the population level given by the official is only 7.5% of the planned number of residents, which by 2020, according to the project, should be 4 million people .
Last year, Chinese media reported that the State Grid Company of China conducted a study in 660 cities. As a result, it was discovered that the electric meters of 65.4 million apartments had zero readings for six months. This suggests that no one lives in the apartments. These apartments are enough to accommodate 200 million people.
Chinese economist Xie Guozhong believes that 25% - 30% of new buildings in China remain empty. According to him, the area of residential premises in Chinese cities is 17 billion square meters. m, which is enough to accommodate all the residents of China.
When the financial crisis began, many Chinese businessmen began to transfer their capital from production to real estate in order to somehow avoid bankruptcy. Thus, many houses and apartments in the country were bought just for the sake of investing money. But this was also the main reason for the sharp increase in real estate prices, which the authorities still cannot bring under control.
The fact is that for some time, due to the construction boom and the global economic crisis that reduced the appetites and opportunities of developers, a hitherto unprecedented type of ghost towns arose in China. This is a comfortable residential property, with all the necessary to modern man infrastructure in which no one lives. And if we don’t settle in it, everything will be overgrown with weeds, like in Pripyat.
