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China Wins at Property Bubbles

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China's capacity to build empty cities is impressive. I wonder what it might cost to rent one out for some paintball or laser tag. It's mind boggling how much has to go wrong in terms of policy, planning, execution and oversight for this to happen.

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how interesting it would be to be able to walk around a place like that, at any hour of the day, with it empty. it looks sort of apocalyptic, in a sense.

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Well this is deplorable. And fascinating. Is China's government simply constructing these cities (10 a year? Did I hear that right?) as a testimony to their position as leading developer, or in projection of their impending future superiority? Perhaps they're looking to conduct a singular migration of prospective buyers and workers once target development has been reached?

I know too little about the current state of development in the East, other than what is filtered in through the news. This is certainly an incentive to find out more.

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haha finally this happens! Actually this already start to happen at year 2005. There are too much building sites in China however new flats are usually abandoned with nobody living. And many society things of China can only be known by guessing, especially bad things. Because the communist use many shit methods to keep the society a big hormony and filter bad things about it.

Anyway there are different versions of this case in each of the chinese newspapers. But I can see money-disparity in China is getting much seroius now.

In Guangzhou there's a lot of ghost buildings, if I am correct there's one located just beside the Pearl River.

st.alfonzo said:

I know too little about the current state of development in the East, other than what is filtered in through the news. This is certainly an incentive to find out more.


Actually development at Asia have China, India, Singapore and Korea the fastest. China now is over-developed in certain regions, especially the coastline cities. By the way of China's development, the politic is still a total crap.

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st.alfonzo said:

Well this is deplorable. And fascinating. Is China's government simply constructing these cities (10 a year? Did I hear that right?) as a testimony to their position as leading developer, or in projection of their impending future superiority? Perhaps they're looking to conduct a singular migration of prospective buyers and workers once target development has been reached?

It's the same as North Korea. It's a ditch effort to show how healthy and prosperous the people are. China may have financial superiority, but the population and resources are at a low. China's building new cities, but no one can afford to live in them.

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Most places that go through bubbles have unoccupied buildings, including my city. I also saw a similar building in Shanghai in 2007, but it was an office tower in the CBD. We wouldn't have known it was vacant if the tour guide hadn't pointed it out.

I wonder if they have thought of any of the following uses for an empty city:

  • Scientific projects: studies, simulations, "Life After Man"-type experiments
  • movie sets
  • theme parks
  • "Escape from New York"-style prison
This also makes me think of those things people build in Minecraft that never have anybody in them.

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Wowzers, that was interesting and mind boggling much. It's a wonder they haven't created a city just for making movies.

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Nice and empty. Would be a nice place to deathmatch. If that were possible... Maybe we could be doing this in the future with cloned bodies or something.

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Ultraboy94 said:

Nice and empty. Would be a nice place to deathmatch. If that were possible... Maybe we could be doing this in the future with cloned bodies or something.


lol actually abandoned buildings in suitable for playing doom also. I have once think of using a chinese garden as a doom map to play.

And I have once got a chance to have a look at a magazine. And this magazine shows an abandoned building in Guangzhou being occupied by some artist to show some arts.

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This website is kinda related.

Here's a pretty long list of abandoned shopping malls in the US. Most of the malls come complete with photos and stuff too. These would make some pretty awesome movie sets and as you said, paintball arenas.

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The place named "green isle" actually kinda looked like a post-apocalyptic land, heh. Smoggy, plants without any green on them, and... it's completely empty! this was quite an interesting watch, really. I am surprised that the errors in their ways haven't been figured out, yet.

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Apparently some of the growth is attributed to officials getting bonuses if they can keep raising the country's GDP by a couple percent every year. In the case of a few cities at least, all the property is actually bought up by investors and speculators. Much like those artificial islands in Dubai. They're empty, but they're bought up. The Chinese government had to put laws in place to limit purchase of investment properties.

As a result of this, and also out of fear of an economic bubble, they've been investing in properties overseas. Such as where I live. Wealthy mainland Chinese aren't the sole buyers, but they make up the bulk of the purchases. They feel it's safer for them to stash their money into Canadian real estate. As a result, prices here have skyrocketed. No shortage of it slowing down either unless we reach a nice financial meltdown. We'll see when interest rates go up.

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Ha I saw that video online and I posted some long comment about how they can get their ghost mall booming over a 6 month 1 year period. I thought eh no one will read it, because its 2 paragraphs long. Turns out some CEO executive in charge of a dying mall in New Jersey read it and he liked my ideas and wanted to see what I could do for their mall. It was interesting. His NJ mall was dying because a fresh mall was built nearby.

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Dear god, empty streets, storefronts, and condos? A mall mostly made of vacant shops? People living 5+ to an apartment next to empty condos? It's like...it's like...the town I live in, just with a lot less homeless people.

Seriously, this is happening in America, too. This is not Someone Else's Problem, this is globally occurring right now. Though I have to admit, that's the biggest scale I've ever seen it happen on.

40oz said:

This website is kinda related.

Here's a pretty long list of abandoned shopping malls in the US. Most of the malls come complete with photos and stuff too. These would make some pretty awesome movie sets and as you said, paintball arenas.

Heh, I've heard of the Totem Lake Mall. I didn't know it was mostly abandoned.

Featuring such stores as Ernst Hardware, Pay N' Save Drugs, and Thriftway Market, the mall was an initial success but slowly it started to fade in the 1990's.

Ernst, Pay N' Save and Thrifway? Wow, that brings me back to memories of my childhood. Every town in Washington had those three stores back in the 80's.

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I've always said people should live together. For a while everyone wanted to live by themselves to be an adult. Why? Split the costs people.

I knew one household 10 years ago that slept in shifts. I knew another that had 10 white people living in a house with 4 bedrooms.

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geo said:

I've always said people should live together. For a while everyone wanted to live by themselves to be an adult. Why? Split the costs people.

I knew one household 10 years ago that slept in shifts. I knew another that had 10 white people living in a house with 4 bedrooms.

Split the cost, or be an independent individual. Wonder which is more enticing.

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Daiyu_Xiaoxiang said:


I read somewhere that they started work on it again. People who pay attention to architecture are worried it has become unstable due to sitting there for 20 years with nothing keeping the weather out.

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The big difference between the website with the closed American malls is that the great majority of those were once thriving when they were shiny and new. I just can't think realistically of any time in the American history when so many NEW buildings went unoccupied.

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That's one odd looking building.

Part of China's problem is that the government's worried about the prospect of civil unrest if economic growth falters, though what they don't seem to realize or appreciate is that building new cities on prime agricultural land and re-developing old neighborhoods in existing cities (confining the working poor to ever shrinking slums in the process) also sow the seeds of discontent. While the estimated 64 million empty apartments could easily accommodate 10% of the population they're priced out of the reach of most workers, so I expect it's only a matter of time before this bubble bursts.

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GreyGhost said:

That's one odd looking building.

I can't think of a shape less suited for optimal living space.

Obviously, the Korean-commi party is lacking in size. *nudge*

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There's no threat of a US-style credit-collapse happening in China, as nobody is being extended credit in the first place, but some sort of collapse is still inevitable. The price of these properties is being driven up solely by investors, rather than by anyone who actually wants to live in them, so at some point everyone will suddenly realize that the properties are actually worthless. I've seen this exact sort of investment boom in MMO economies, which sometimes have surprising parity with those in the real world. The only question is: how long will it take for the axe to fall?

You sure can't fault the Chinese government's ambition, though. No other nation seems so intent on making a Great Leap Forward.

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geo said:

I knew another that had 10 white people living in a house with 4 bedrooms.


Would there be any difference if they were black, brown or yellow? Are those more inherently suited for living in crowded conditions of something?

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GreyGhost said:

That's one odd looking building.

Part of China's problem is that the government's worried about the prospect of civil unrest if economic growth falters.


Rent in China are actually very expensive now, it's totally different from 1980s. And actually the most serious society problem in China now are "Outer-province workers situation". In this situation workers need to work at other province, and may not be able to return back to their own home at short time. Corruptions, Census register(e.g Zhejiang residents living in Shanghai or other provinces are not allowed to get anything from the new place they live) and human rights are just followed behind.

Technician said:

Obviously, the Korean-commi party is lacking in size. *nudge*


The Jasmine Revolution maybe useful. And that coming leader Kim Jong Un has no experience of leading, it was known that the armies and some of the Workers' Party members refused to listen to him. One matter is this guy is actually very horrible. I heard that he can keep people or Western countries mouth shut by pressing a button to explode some nuclear missiles. Actually some North Korean refused to listen to the government, and I also hope the Workers' Party will fuck off soon.

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Maes said:

Would there be any difference if they were black, brown or yellow? Are those more inherently suited for living in crowded conditions of something?


Usually the people living in conditions like that in the US are illegal immigrants of some variety. So, mostly Mexicans.

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Maes said:

Would there be any difference if they were black, brown or yellow? Are those more inherently suited for living in crowded conditions of something?


Nah people just stereotype a certain color of people to living 10 people into a house. In fact a real estate agent I know was told by his supervisor to make sure when a Mexican buys a single family home its for a single family and not three. I have seen 3 Mexican families living in a home a few times before.

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