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Ghost Cities Explained
WHTC ^ | February 8, 2011 | Red Kingman

Posted on 02/10/2011 5:06:58 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Until I came across this post on redalert.wnd.com I neber even heard of the phrase "ghost cities". But in China they are all the rage! Remarkable as it seems, photographs of these "ghost cities" – after countless billions of dollars spent on their design and construction – reveal nobody lives there.

We're talking block after block of empty houses and apartment buildings, glamorous public buildings, magnificent public parks and sports complexes, even art museums, remain entirely empty.

The Mail in London estimated that China is building up to 20 new ghost cities a year on the country's "vast swathes of free land."

Business Insider speculated that the Chinese need to put their money somewhere, so developers have decided to build, as a place to store the wealth, even if the Chinese building these cities do not intend to live in them and there is no prospect they can find renters. Still, the phenomenon of China building these elaborate ghost cities is hard to understand.

"The result of this unnecessary expansion is that we have perhaps the first outposts of civilization that are impractical to the point of being unusable, as many of them have housing prices so high that even if there were people available to fill them, it would be impossible to do so," Anthony D. Poerio wrote in his entry on the website ScallyWagAndVagabond.com.

"The money simply isn't there, and ideally never will be," he said. "Otherwise the investments of an entire country's wealthy would be utterly devalued (unless China someday controls so much of the world's wealth the cost of living in these cities becomes affordable only to them." Obviously, these ghost cities are not being built in China to be inhabited. Instead, they are being built to embody capital in a physical form, as bizarre as that idea sounds.

"It might all seem mere nouveau riche folly, were it not for China's national goal of moving hundreds of millions of rural residents to big cities over the next decade, in the hope of creating a large middle class," the New York Times reported.

Still, Patrick Chovanek, business professor at Tsinghua University, insisted to the Times that the building boom is being driven by frenzied investors, not by the housing needs of millions of migrating workers. People are using real estate as an investment, as a place to store cash – they treat it like gold," Chovanec said. "They're stockpiling empty units. This is going on in cities of virtually every size."

Kind of reminds me of the building boom in the mid to late 1900's when I would see the building of strip mall aftger strip mall, and pffice building after office building being built, but with no tennants. That trend has ground to a halt with the bursting of the housing bubble. Will China reap a similar bitter harvest?


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; ghostcities; investment; realestate
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To: COBOL2Java

Well, at least the cemetary is a going concern...


21 posted on 02/10/2011 5:38:23 PM PST by MileHi ( "It's coming down to patriots vs the politicians." - ovrtaxt)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
It may be their solution to the hou-kou (city resident) permit. Move all the illegal city immigrants from the country, estimated at 100 million, into "ghost" cities they are building.

Force the farmers who have come to the city to move to new cities where China needs people to hold onto the territory. In the Western desert where Urgyurs are, in the dry areas with mineral wealth, nothing says "ours" like 100,000 residents in a modern city. But to get the residents to stay there instead of the dense Eastern coastal cities, it needs to be as big, as gleaming and with all the infrastructure.

Build the city, then move all the wanna-be city dwellers there.

22 posted on 02/10/2011 5:38:59 PM PST by tbw2 (Freeper sci-fi - "Sirat: Through the Fires of Hell" - on amazon.com)
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To: Pollster1

But but but wouldn’t that mean we’d have to kill them all?


23 posted on 02/10/2011 5:39:24 PM PST by null and void (We are now in day 751 of our national holiday from reality. - 0bama really isn't one of US.)
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To: AnAmericanMother

where is borley rectory? not familiar with that one.

Then there is the state mental hospital in weston WV in which ghosts attack people and hunters hear bloodcurdling screams in the middle of the day and no one is there.


24 posted on 02/10/2011 5:40:49 PM PST by Armedanddangerous
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To: COBOL2Java

I still cant decide if the bricks and the 2x4s in the basement really did fly across the room and almost hit them. I know it was on video.


25 posted on 02/10/2011 5:42:21 PM PST by Armedanddangerous
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Replacement cities for those that are eventually nuked.


26 posted on 02/10/2011 5:42:41 PM PST by Rebelbase
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To: Huebolt
With a billion people, the Chinese could reproduce and fill up a thousand “ghost cities” very, very quickly. Where they get food for those is another matter. Once the western market for their 'Made in China' goods collapses for a myriad of reasons (the main one being the western wolrd's own economic collapse) these cities will become mausoleums for starving Chinese.
27 posted on 02/10/2011 5:44:27 PM PST by ExpatCanuck
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Perhaps they believe that in a nuclear exchange, their occupied cities would be annhilated, and these cities are the back-ups.


28 posted on 02/10/2011 5:46:28 PM PST by PBinTX
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To: Pride in the USA
Remember our conversation about this awhile back? These people are either totally insane, or up to something inscrutable and possibly nefarious.

Here's some amazing satellite imagery: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339536/Ghost-towns-China-Satellite-images-cities-lying-completely-deserted.html

29 posted on 02/10/2011 5:47:58 PM PST by lonevoice (Where the Welfare State is on the march, the Police State is not far behind)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Even these ghost cities have Detroit beat...


30 posted on 02/10/2011 5:48:53 PM PST by ransacked
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To: Bryanw92
The article mentions that this could be the precursor to moving the rural Chinese into these cities to create a huge middle class

Some of these "cities" work only because they are all but empty. There is nothing like the infrastructure to needed to provide water, gas, electricity, and sewage to the citizens, even by Chinese standards, if the apartments are ever actually occupied. Its not some brilliant, long term scheme, its insanity. If the Chicom Government could stop it, without a crash that would threaten its existence, it would. But it can't, so it allows it to continue.

31 posted on 02/10/2011 5:49:20 PM PST by Pilsner
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To: null and void
But but but wouldn’t that mean we’d have to kill them all?

I wasn't commenting on how they should get where they belong.

32 posted on 02/10/2011 5:58:08 PM PST by Pollster1 (Natural born citizen of the USA, with the birth certificate to prove it)
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To: Rebelbase

That’s my guess too, why do we assume dictators and fanatics will not plan a nuclear exchange and have cities ready in reserve?

Except that in most circumstances one expects the old cties to be rebuilt. And you would have lost most of the useful city population, unless you relocate them just before the attack.


33 posted on 02/10/2011 5:59:48 PM PST by Williams (It's the policies, stupid.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Dubai II, III, IV, V, VI, VII,...
34 posted on 02/10/2011 6:00:37 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum ("If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." -- Barry Soetoro, June 11, 2008)
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To: All

I heard rumor these ‘ghost cities’ are a Discovery-MythBusters experiment...they’re trying bust the History Channels- Life After People.

The Chinese thought it a fantastic venture to back, after all they know a good investment when they see it—they buy our debt. They also suspect they can resolve the North Korean nuke problem by giving Kim Jong-il a starring role.

We’ll know in 150 years if History Channel got it right, though Mythbusters is worried they may be canceled by Discovery before this myth can be cracked.

http://www.history.com/shows/life-after-people/videos#capitol-records


35 posted on 02/10/2011 6:04:59 PM PST by Irenic
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

It is better they spend it on this than their military or terrorism support. I felt the same about the UAE and their crazy islands and sky scrappers.


36 posted on 02/10/2011 6:11:42 PM PST by FreeAtlanta (Obama and the left are making a mockery of our country.)
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To: null and void
"Saaaayyyy, those would be great places to relocate all the world’s unwanted muslims...

or 'infidels"

37 posted on 02/10/2011 6:26:58 PM PST by maine-iac7
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To: Bryanw92
Not really. The article mentions that this could be the precursor to moving the rural Chinese into these cities to create a huge middle class.

Rural Chinese can be very primitive. It'll be worse than the Beverly Hillbillies.

38 posted on 02/10/2011 6:34:59 PM PST by Moonman62 (Half of all Americans are above average. Politicians come from the other half.)
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To: maine-iac7

Nope. Infidels are for menial slave work, paying the jizyah and beheading when there of no further use.


39 posted on 02/10/2011 6:36:23 PM PST by null and void (We are now in day 751 of our national holiday from reality. - 0bama really isn't one of US.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Sounds like China is following the UN’s Agenda 21 plan for community development. If people are forced to move there, then we’ll know.


40 posted on 02/10/2011 6:42:55 PM PST by ViLaLuz (2 Chronicles 7:14)
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