It doesn’t need refuting, because it is irrelevant to the Chinese military threat. It is globalist Soma to distract Americans from our own decline and accept the new world order. It is a distraction to look at handful ghost towns; meanwhile China builds one ship a day while we crank out 10 a year.
The idea of the Chinese Ghost town was popularized in the late aughts, during the boom after China was brought into the WTO. You should read what he has been written more recently about those towns. The reality is much more mixed on those towns.
There’s a reason Chinese military equipment is not in hot demand around the world despite low cost. Tofu-dreg.