
Ordos, China: The World’s Largest Ghost City (2014) - axelfontaine
http://www.thebohemianblog.com/2014/02/welcome-to-ordos-world-largest-ghost-city-china.html
======
presty
isn't all this just a matter of time?

[https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/koos-jansen/guest-
post-5-c...](https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/koos-jansen/guest-
post-5-chinese-ghost-cities-came-alive/)

[http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/04/21/the-myth-
of...](http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/04/21/the-myth-of-chinas-
ghost-cities/)

~~~
cthalupa
This is probably the most relevant comment in the thread.

These ghost cities start that way, but they all end up being populated, and as
soon as the flood gates open, they fill up fast. It just takes certain factors
reaching critical mass to push them from the 'No one is living there' to
'Everyone is moving in and filling the entire place up'

Edit: Looks like it's already begun in Ordos as well.
[http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/ordos-china-
to...](http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/ordos-china-tourist-
city/)

As usual, the initial settling is largely happening due to the Chinese
government applying artificial levers to get people to move there, but that's
a tactic they've used successfully on a lot of these "ghost towns"

~~~
iiiggglll
Sound like China is planning ahead. Contrast this with the American problem of
nothing new being built:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/here-s-
how...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/here-s-how-much-new-
york-and-san-francisco-s-tight-housing-markets-are-hurting-the-economy)

~~~
adventured
That sounds fine, _if_ it all works out as planned.

China is about to become the most indebted nation. At the rapid pace they're
accumulating debt, that should happen within the next few years. They've spent
wildly to keep the building spree going; even now their real estate market is
crashing, it has been falling for a year.

It begs a simple question: how many more people can China transition out of
old China's poverty, and into the new China's middle class, before they run
out of the ability to accumulate more debt to keep it all going (global
consumers are tapped out, which has left China's manufacturing boom dead in
the water, with their PMI contracting during a supposed non-recessionary
period).

I fail to see how thinking ahead equates to taking on tens of trillions in new
debt to fake economic growth. That sounds like they're baking up an economic
recipe for future stagnation.

~~~
coliveira
Excellent comment. China overdid their stimulus package in 2008 because of the
need to keep the jobs coming. If would have been much better for them if they
had used 2008 to slow the growth rhythm to something sustainable (4 to 5%). I
think they are now headed to a very difficult transition, probably Japanese-
style, because of so much debt.

~~~
gbog
I don't know for Chinese gov but I know for sure that Chinese families are not
used to buy expensive things with money they don't have, so no, I don't agree:
China as a whole has a lot of real money in the pockets.

~~~
coliveira
This doesn't make any difference. The Japanese are even more frugal than the
Chinese, that is why they have been able to support a deflationary economy for
more than 20 years.

------
pavlov
_" The man led us through a courtyard, around the back of the school
buildings, and suddenly there it was: the yard opened up into a wide, grassy
playing field, flanked on one side by raised seating.

On the edge of the grass pitch – regularly mowed, yet never used – we were
pointed towards a series of bronze statues. The figures showed children in
traditional Chinese dress, frozen in play as the pink silk scarves tied about
their necks flapped noisily in the wind.

'Fifty thousand Quai!' the man giggled, ecstatic, before explaining to us that
the silk scarves were washed and replaced on a weekly basis."_

Apparently thousands of buildings are being maintained, cleaned, even silk
scarves on statues getting washed -- for nobody to see.

Who is paying the maintenance workers' wages? The local government?

~~~
undertow
Not to mention the draw on electricity, which probably points back to some
undisclosed amount of coal being burned in a power plant, somewhere nearby...

------
dm2
"Typical housing prices in Kangbashi have fallen from $1,100 to $470 per
square foot, over the last five years alone."

Why are the prices so high?

Obviously nobody wants to pay $500k - $1 million for a 1,000 sqft. apartment
in a Chinese ghost town.

~~~
pavlov
That does seem insanely expensive. Maybe the price was quoted in $/m^2 and the
unit was mistakenly switched to square feet at some point?

An alternative explanation is that the owners of these houses don't really
want to sell them at all for some reason. Maybe keeping the money tied in
unsold real estate is somehow preferable to having cash or other assets, due
to e.g. government housing subsidies or something?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Nobody wants to take a loss on real estate in China, so they'll just wait
until the market is better or they get compensated by the government when they
eventually "redevelop" the land (those apartments only have an effective 10-20
year lifespan given quality of current construction methods). They don't take
out big loans to buy these places, so there is no liquidity pressure. This is
good and bad, no housing market crash but a huge zombie market of low turn
over of second hand housing even in much more active first tier cities.

~~~
guard-of-terra
"those apartments only have an effective 10-20 year lifespan"

Economical or political crisis hits, and they'll have to live in those
apartments for 50+ years. We've been there already.

How do you build an apartment block these days anyway so it just lasts 20
years? With modern materials it's a bit unexpected.

It's a royally crappy idea anyway. Imagine selling one of those apartments to
a person aged 40, who then promptly retires and have to live 20 years in a
crumbling home or lose one and go homeless.

Apartment is supposed to be a solid investment.

~~~
ics
"Modern materials" doesn't necessarily mean the most durable or well-suited to
the task. It typically means cheap to produce (therefore readily available)
and visually... acceptable.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The concrete China uses is pretty cheap actually, and the labor used to put it
together is fairly unskilled. They have to build much thicker as a result,
which leads to higher maintenance costs (which isn't done) and much quicker
degradation.

------
ChuckMcM
There have been other stories of "ghost towns" which eventually filled up with
people. Perhaps this is just one of those. I always find it fascinating but I
also note that a major disaster in a city like Beijing and there is already a
bunch of places to house people post disaster. I don't know if anyone else
thinks about it in that way but from a civil defense perspective it seems
interesting to have "back up" cities waiting.

For other Person of Interest fans I found that Ordos was a ghost town
interesting from that aspect of things as well.

~~~
nate_meurer
It only makes sense if the backup cities are already owned by the government.
If populating those cities post-disaster requires government appropriation of
an entire city's worth of private real estate assets, the resulting financial
and political instability could well dwarf anything wrought by the original
disaster.

~~~
deoptimo
So you think that the appropriation of unused real estate is worse than
whatever disaster led to the mass exodus of a population from a major city.
Interesting, but that is not how I think.

~~~
nate_meurer
You have badly misread my comment.

------
jimrandomh
It may seem weird to have almost-empty cities, but from a different
perspective, a city like that is an amazing resource. If China ever has
disaster or other crisis that creates lots of refugees (think Hurricane
Katrina), they have a functioning city with lots of space ready for people to
go to. Which is pretty awesome, when you think about it.

~~~
nate_meurer
But these don't really make very good "backup" cities. The housing isn't owned
by the government. It's owned by investors, often individuals, and it serves
as a sink for money that has nowhere else to go. Real estate and construction
investment of this kind is one of the big drivers of the Chinese economy. If
the government confiscates property on the scale you're talking about -- even
if it's in response to a disaster -- the bottom would drop out of their
financial markets. Ain't gonna happen, even in a disaster.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Not to mention it's the upper middle class and rich who owns these
places...the one class the government really doesn't want to piss off.

------
akandiah
There was a great documentary done on China's empty cities done by Dateline
(in Australia):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbDeS_mXMnM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbDeS_mXMnM)

------
highCs
The author is on Patreon:
[https://www.patreon.com/darmonrichter?ty=h](https://www.patreon.com/darmonrichter?ty=h)

------
erikb
While watching that let's not forget that at least in Europe we also have
"ghost cities".

~~~
danmaz74
I never heard of any... example?

~~~
lmz
I'm not European but:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102074/Spain-
haunte...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102074/Spain-haunted-
ghost-towns-built-boom-years-unemployment-tops-5million.html)

although things seem to be improving there:

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/350b9c8c-43f4-11e4-8abd-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/350b9c8c-43f4-11e4-8abd-00144feabdc0.html)

~~~
danmaz74
Thanks for the link.

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beachstartup
i don't understand the fascination with these ghost cities. they're just giant
failed businesses.

imagine if they built vegas and nobody came. that's it, in a nutshell. it's
not that weird.

~~~
woah
Looks pretty weird to me

~~~
beachstartup
there are abandoned buildings/construction and complexes in almost every
developing country i've ever been to. china just does it on a bigger scale.

~~~
peferron
Scale matters.

------
CyberDildonics
Inner Mongolia is a region in China.

