
Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive - superfx
https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/koos-jansen/guest-post-5-chinese-ghost-cities-came-alive/
======
flyrain
My hometown is Wujin, Changzhou, the second city this post described. I lived
there for almost 20 years. It has never been a ghost city as I known. It is
always flourishing. If this place will be called ghost city, I don't know how
you describe most United States cities.

~~~
lotsofmangos
That is the point of the article.

The article is a list of places that are not ghost cities, even though they
have been described as such by idiots in the press.

~~~
mattwad
Actually he claims they used to be ghost cities: "Below are five new cities in
China that have advanced through the ghost city phase and have come to life."

~~~
lotsofmangos
The preceding paragraphs before that line all attack the press concept of the
Chinese ghost city though, so in the context of that line, ghost city is
meaning 'normal city still under construction' rather than 'giant Potemkin
village never to be filled'.

------
beefsack
I'm currently living about 5km away from Zhujiang in Guangzhou, numbered two
in the article.

I'm actually surprised to hear that it was previously a ghost city, it's been
a very busy spot since I was first over here around 5 years ago. It's also a
little strange to hear it called a "city", it's more of a district in the
centre in what was already a very large city.

------
nichtich
Location is the key. The places listed in the article are all "new districts"
of growing major cities, so they will be filled as planed. But not all major
cities are actually growing, or growing as fast as planners hoped. And no
official will admit their city is not growing, so as new districts are being
build, some of them are going to be ghost ones.

However, the real ghost cities are mostly not going to be the ones you see in
the media, for the reason of not shiny enough. If a project is on the failing
trail, both the government and the developer will try to back off, to cut
loses. So if you see the buildings are properly finished and streets well
maintained, just lacking people, then it means the government and developers
have not lost hope, and usually they have some good reasons.

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davydka
I feel like the idea of the Chinese "ghost city" is just plain false. You can
label any new development this way. A typical housing development could have
the title "Crazy Americans Build Ghost Houses". This is just urban planning
and development being implemented.

~~~
JeremyNT
> This is just urban planning and development being implemented.

I feel like this is the origin of it. In the US, we seem to take a much more
short term view of "urban planning" \- rather than being laid out up front to
support high density, cities more typically grow via low density sprawl on
demand.

The idea of having a city (or district) constructed from the ground up to
efficiently meet the needs of citizens 15 years in the future is alien to most
of us. The context in which we typically encounter large groups of vacant
buildings and empty streets is one in which something has gone wrong, which I
think is why we find the "ghost city" narrative compelling.

------
manuelriel
Pudong was never a ghost city either. A more complete sample would be
desirable. How about South China Mall? That was one of the prime examples,
wasn't it?

~~~
fspeech
[http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-
cnt.aspx?id=2014...](http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-
cnt.aspx?id=20140706000009&cid=1202)

------
westiseast
The "ghost city" phenomenon always seemed like a good headline, ignoring the
real building tragedy going on: poor quality housing, poor city planning, poor
urban facilities. I see massive developments going on around me and yes, for a
long time they are empty and ghostlike. they slowly fill up, and the urban
centers become that bit more unliveable, that bit more crowded etc.

~~~
crdoconnor
Some of them were (and are) definitely real.

------
lotsofmangos
_“The ghost city of Dantu has been mostly empty for over a decade,” Business
Insider reported. “In most neighborhoods of Dantu, there are no cars, no signs
of life,” reported the Daily Mail. Both of these claims were made from looking
at dated satellite images that showed the new district while it was still a
construction site, not from reporters who actually went there._

Business as usual in the world of journalism.

------
zghst
Hmmm still doesn't counter the fact that there is overdevelopment in China,
just this year CNN ran a story on a ghost district in Tiajin....

[http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/gallery/china-tianjin-
gh...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/gallery/china-tianjin-ghost-
city/index.html)

Also Vice had an episode featuring ghost towns:
[http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/explore-chinese-ghost-
towns...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/explore-chinese-ghost-towns-in-
tonights-episode-of-vice-on-hbo)

Yes our news media likes to hype up anything China these days. The problem
with overdevelopment is not that the cities remain empty, it is the debts that
come with them ([http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-04/china-s-
ci...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-04/china-s-cities-face-
judgment-day-on-debts-as-costs-soar)). I can imagine many Chinese cities with
flashy buildings are deep in debt, American style.

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dmritard96
currently in Shenzhen - my reaction has been that there are these beutiful
malls and buildings that are being built but som feel empty. Sure you could
chock it up to an overzelous goverment pouring money into development but you
might also take a look at malls in the US that are now empty. The counter
examples though are numerous. There are many areas that feel incredibly
vibrant, full of buzz and people. The amount of consumerism in China shocked
me, even as an American...

------
jpatokal
Looks like even the most famous "ghost city" of them all, Ordos, isn't pining
for the fjords just yet.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/ordos-a-
gho...](http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/ordos-a-ghost-town-
that-isnt/274776/)

~~~
sergers
2013 article... You fall right into the posts topic.

Latest maps show beginnings of a bustling city... Wiki show 2m pop.

Chinese really believe in build it.. They will come...... Eventually in
hordes.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Here is one from yesterday:

[http://gizmodo.com/4-instant-cities-that-are-still-
completel...](http://gizmodo.com/4-instant-cities-that-are-still-completely-
empty-1693270774)

Quote:

>Today, the real-estate situation in Ordos has turned macabre. Video
billboards along the city's major roadways display mug shots of fugitive
developers who have skipped town, fleeing their debts. There are rumors about
the dynamiting of buildings in Kangbashi: about owners of unoccupied apartment
towers who hope to create value through destruction, reselling freshly cleared
land to new investors.

~~~
fspeech
Yeah but if you read on you will find that that piece is actually based on an
NYT story: [http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/ordos-china-
to...](http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/ordos-china-tourist-
city/?_r=2)

The NYT piece itself is much more carefully hedged. The TL;DR by the reporter:
"IN SHORT, ORDOS is not empty, but it is odd"

A real estate bust implies that investors lost money but not necessarily a
ghost town. Anyway the Ordos story was a lot more market driven than the other
ones: for a while when coal price was dear Ordos boasted the highest per
capita income in all of China. Also land is a lot cheaper in this unpopulated
area.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Developers in China that focus on 2nd and 3rd tier cities are doing very
poorly right now. The problem is that property became a speculative investment
and an inflation hedge, but true demand has yet to materialize. The people who
need housing can't afford these apartments, those that can afford them don't
need to live there. Ugh.

~~~
fspeech
Yeah they need the property tax real bad so at least investors will be
incentivized to rent out their property instead of keeping their apartments
vacant.

------
wmf
Building an empty city from scratch and then populating it sounds utopian, and
people are pretty skeptical of utopian thinking these days. But I guess it
makes sense under China's combination of rapid urbanization and central
planning.

------
johnong
This was covered by 60 Minutes awhile back. See the youtube link
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei0FpwI1dqg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei0FpwI1dqg)

------
zhte415
Quite literally 'Built It, and They Will Come'.

------
comrade1
The current narrative in the u.s. press, including the tech press, is that
china is somewhat backward and uncompetitive. Some people even still call them
communist. When the reality is quite different, with cutting edge research,
products, technology coming out every day.

There are cities in china you've never even heard of that have populations
bigger than most major u.s. cities. In something like 50 years the Chinese
went from a poor 3rd world country to 1st world, pulling over 500 million
people out of poverty and into the middle class.

The u.s. view is stuck in the 1960s-80s view of China. Even the chinese food
in the u.s. is old-fashioned and not modern compared to what's in China now.

~~~
cbd1984
> Some people even still call them communist.

Such as the PRC government.

[http://english1.english.gov.cn/links/cpc.htm](http://english1.english.gov.cn/links/cpc.htm)

It's Socialist, too

[http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2014/09/09/content...](http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2014/09/09/content_281474986284659.htm)

> In something like 50 years the Chinese went from a poor 3rd world country to
> 1st world, pulling over 500 million people out of poverty and into the
> middle class.

So did the Soviet Union. The thing is, you can only have an Industrial
Revolution once.

> Even the chinese food in the u.s. is old-fashioned and not modern compared
> to what's in China now.

Chinese-American cuisine is completely separate from what's eaten in China and
must be understood as its own cultural entity.

~~~
pjlegato
The Soviet Union was, by definition, a "second world" country. First and third
world do not mean "rich" and "poor". They refer to political alignment with
the United States (first), USSR (second), or unaligned (third world).

~~~
cbd1984
> First and third world do not mean "rich" and "poor".

They do now, in this post-1991 world.

> They refer to political alignment with the United States (first), USSR
> (second), or unaligned (third world).

So China was Third World in 1990? That's not going to be very defensible,
except in terms of the definition you just gave, which lost all relevance in
1991.

My point is, the meanings of the words have changed, and trying to use them in
their original sense now is just perverse. The original sense was predicated
on a political reality which is now gone.

~~~
pjlegato
If you mean rich, say rich. If you mean poor, say poor. There are already
perfectly good words for those exact concepts, and they're not "first" and
"third world". Popular ignorance of the actual meanings of those terms does
not change anything.

What is perverse is the widespread abuse of long-established academic terms
with precise and well known meanings as co-opted euphemisms because one is too
embarassed to simply say "rich" or "poor" when that is what one in fact means.

~~~
cbd1984
> Popular ignorance of the actual meanings of those terms does not change
> anything.

How do you think words get meanings in the first place? Do you think they're
handed down from on high?

~~~
pjlegato
Of course not, they evolve over time according to decentralized usage (not
necessarily from ignorance.) However, this does not imply that anything anyone
says is just as valid as any other, nor that any proposed meaning shift
enacted by any small group ought to be immediately and unquestioningly
accepted by everyone else. Others are also perfectly free to reject the
proposal and continue to use the old meaning -- and to advocate for this, too.
Only time will tell which group wins.

Just as words sometimes change meaning, there are many more cases where some
people provisionally use a word with a new meaning, but this new meaning fails
to take hold and vanishes. This happens when enough other people fail to adopt
the proposed new meaning, and stick to the old meaning.

In this case, I am one of those people, and I am encouraging others to do the
same. I believe I have very good reasons, and I am sharing them.

Redefining first and third world to mean "rich" and "poor" is unnecessary
since we already have words for those meanings, and we have no other
convenient words for what "first world" and "third world" conventionally mean
in their original usage.

The desire to redefine them is in my opinion solely motivated by the desire
for a euphemism to say something "nicer" sounding than "poor." Well, "poor" is
not a nice thing; it's never going to sound nice. That desire is merely the
euphemism treadmill at work. if you are going to call a group "poor," at least
have the decency to say so directly rather than trying to hide behind a
euphemism.

Besides, we have no other convenient words to say "aligned with capitalism
during the Cold War" and "unaligned with either capitalism or Communism."

------
leeroyding
I don't see any "ghost city" here. That's hard working people building a new
prosperous city from scratch. IMO a "ghost city" would be cities that is not
as popular as before, not some place that had never become a city.

