Matt posted a link somewhere observing that China has been hoarding gold big-time, and built the weird ghost cities on defaults credit to accommodate population growth post-crash.
The ghost cities were built as a real estate scam.
It worked like this:
Mr Chan built the place for 1 million RMB and as it was building sold it to his brother-in-law Mr Wu for 1.20 million RMB who sold it to Mr Chan’s Wife Mrs Zhu (Chinese women don’t take their husbands name)for 1.5 million who sold the place to her uncle Mr Chin for 1.75 million who sold the development to Mr Chan again for 2 million. Mr Chan then sells the development to Mr Smith from the US/Australia/UK for 2.5 million RMB after pitching to him the fraudulent idea that the property had doubled in value in just one year
The issue is that the Chinese con-men/Real Estate developers didn’t stop to think that Mr Smith would only be fooled by this ONCE. He told his friends so that when Mr Chan started phase II of the development he is left holding the bag on a lot of unfinished, over price property
I’ve been reading for a few years now that China,India, and Russia are all hoarding gold.