I have travelled to China on 6 different occasions over the past decade and seen this phenomena first hand. The part that this article doesn’t capture is that this process keeps their people busy and allows the state to distribute money to the masses- a so-called “make-work” process. There are many new empty western style developments and ghost cities all over the countryside. If you look at the vacancy rates country-wide it would be astounding.
It is comparable to their punishment ideology. Dig a hole, fill it in, dig another hole. It keeps people working with no tangible results.