Endless blocks of high-rise buildings in which no one has ever lived, abandoned amusement parks, empty giant shopping malls, deserted avant-garde theaters and museums, wide avenues without cars - over the past decade, several new cities and areas have appeared in China at once, where such an impression is created, a man's foot has not set foot. What is it? Is it a strategic mistake of the country's authorities, who inflated a huge bubble in the real estate market, or investment in residential infrastructure calculated for several years ahead that will allow China to maintain unprecedented economic growth rates in the future? Onliner.by tried to understand the phenomenon of Chinese "ghost towns" and understand whether they have a bright future.
About 15 years ago, the Chinese government allowed its citizens to buy houses and apartments. Since then, the residential real estate market has grown exponentially, which developers, both commercial and state ones, tried to take advantage of. In many Chinese cities, active construction of new residential areas began. Blocks of typical houses and whole "forests" of high-rise buildings have taken the place of "hutongs", low-rise historical, often slum buildings, and so far empty urban outskirts.
Active construction, and not only housing construction, has become one of the locomotives of the Chinese economy. The state, generously lending it, “warmed up” many related sectors of the economy, which ultimately had a direct impact on GDP growth.
However, the generous “pumping up” of construction investments in the end also caused a certain negative opposite effect. The Chinese are building so much housing that there is an obvious oversupply in the market. In some cities of the country, entire districts are actually built "in reserve", ahead of demand, and apartments and houses in them cannot find their inhabitant for quite a long time.
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China is not limited in funds, and therefore, to the envy of the Belarusians, is building on a truly Asian scale. Any Minsk residential area, even such a large one as the notorious Kamennaya Gorka, will seem like a small cozy village in comparison with the gigantic "people" of our main eastern strategic partner. However, we must pay tribute, along with housing, practically all the necessary infrastructure is being commissioned almost simultaneously, from roads, schools, hospitals and even universities to new large-scale administrative and public centers with government buildings, museums, theaters and huge shopping malls.
This is how the new community center of Xinyang City in Henan Province looks like. As you can clearly see in the photo from the GoogleEarth service, a whole complex of administrative and cultural buildings was built along with residential areas.
But if the infrastructure facilities are still somehow used by residents of the neighboring old urban areas, then the new residential buildings are almost completely empty.
The central square of Xinyang with the building of the city administration. The territory is completely landscaped, but there is no one to use it.
New areas of the Suzhou metropolis in the east of the country in the lower reaches of the Yangtze. Soviet architects who knew a lot about the construction of new cities would have envied the scope of the urban planning plan, but pay attention to the number of cars on these wide and completely deserted avenues.
Chinese construction companies and local authorities are using the "cheap" money of the central government with might and main. Infrastructure objects are leased on a turnkey basis, which no one needs. No, this is not a park of culture and recreation of Pripyat, a satellite town of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but an abandoned entertainment complex under the romantic name "Honey Lake" near Shenzhen.
In 2005, the New South China Mall opened in Dongguan, southern China, the second largest shopping and entertainment complex in the world after the famous Dubai Mall. The huge structure, designed for no less than 2,350 stores, has been virtually completely empty since its opening.
In the complex, the architecture of various sectors of which is stylized as Amsterdam, Paris, Venice, Egypt, California and other cities and countries, with replicas of the Parisian Arc de Triomphe and the bell tower of the Venetian Cathedral of St. Brand, there are only a few fast food chain restaurants and a go-kart track that has taken up unnecessary parking.
And all because the giant shopping center was built on the remote outskirts of the city, far from the actively used highways. How such an urban planning mistake was made and whether the main goal of the developer was a simple and understandable use of money even for Belarusians, is still not completely clear. Nevertheless, the complex is not closed and continues to be maintained in a working condition.
Not far from Shanghai in the mid-2000s, several districts were built at once, each of which was stylized to resemble European architecture. Apparently, seeing our part of the world with their own eyes is still a pleasure inaccessible for the average Chinese, so they create their own Europe right in their country. For example, the town of Qianduchen was built in 2007 and is a small copy of Paris, even with its own Eiffel Tower.
Despite the picturesque architectural environment, so unusual for the inhabitants of the country, the area for 100,000 inhabitants is popular only among newlyweds who are avid for a beautiful picture for wedding photographs. Most of the apartments in the "Parisian" apartment buildings of the Shanghai suburb have not found their owners.
The situation is the same in Thames City, a Chinese replica of a stereotypical (from their point of view) English town.
However, there are much more areas in China that have not yet been populated with buildings that are more traditional for a modern country. Chenggong, a satellite city of 6 million Kunming, is seen as the main reserve for the expansion of the neighboring metropolis.
True, here, too, the state has outstripped the real need for this housing. Chenggong is actually already ready, and there are still few people who want to live in it permanently, although some state institutions have already been transferred here, including the Kunming administration.
To the envy of the Smolevichi, gigantic funds have been successfully mastered in Chenggun, but residential skyscrapers, gaping with window openings, do not find their "beneficiaries".
But the most widely known example of a Chinese "ghost town" is Kanbashi in the northern Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. Here, in 2003, the Chinese authorities announced the construction of a virtually new settlement within the boundaries of the urban district of Ordos, designed for a population of 1 million people.
Over the past decade, according to Bloomberg estimates, about $ 161 billion has been invested in this great construction of Chinese socialism, nicknamed "Dubai of northern China", an amount truly fantastic, given that a third of the planned housing has been built (for 300,000 inhabitants), and more than 100,000 people now live in the new city.
Kanbashi on Google Earth maps. In the center of the city, along with residential quarters, a public and administrative center was built, from which a wide boulevard leads to a reservoir where a recreational zone has been created. The Chinese must be given their due: in contrast to the Belarusian reality, infrastructure facilities are given the same attention as mass housing.
The government offices of the Ordos urban district have already been moved here from neighboring Dongsheng.
A huge Genghis Khan square was created in front of the administration, which immediately, without delay, was decorated with works of monumental art, emphasizing the ethnic originality of the region.
And other public buildings were added to government offices, each of which is an excellent example of modern architecture. The fact that the city is located in a remote province is not at all a reason to deprive it of its current and potentially interesting appearance even for tourists. The city museum, created by the renowned Chinese workshop MAD Architects, should remind of the desert on the site of which Kanbashi was built.
Next to the museum is the library, which looks like a stack of huge books.
National Theater with a concert hall in a smaller annex.
Shopping center.
However, there are actually no visitors there. Even government officials and public officials working in Kanbashi still prefer to live in neighboring Tongsheng. The residential areas of the new city are still deserted and the roads are deserted. Whole, in our usual terminology, "microdistricts" are not inhabited, not only multi-storey high-rise buildings, but also individual houses of a rather nice look.
So are there any prospects for Kanbashi and other Chinese "ghost towns"? Or will they remain a gradually decrepit monument to the artificially triggered government investment boom and the notorious real estate bubble?
In fact, as experts point out, most "ghost towns" are not so ghosts. Many Chinese, having received the opportunity to purchase real estate, use it as an investment. Living in already established cities and districts, they often own an additional apartment, and sometimes more than one, in newly-built districts, that is, a significant part of housing in deserted "ghosts" still has a well-defined owner.
In addition, the existence of so many empty housing is easily explained by the fact that the Chinese state, as usual, simply set a grandiose pace for construction. Having at its disposal gigantic amounts of free financial resources, it prefers to invest them in infrastructure projects and real estate construction, realizing that sooner or later there will be a return on these insane, at first glance, expenses. That is why the country is currently undergoing such active work on the construction of roads and railways, fantastic business districts, on which the world's best architects are working, and often even new cities.
And here the example of the above-described Kanbashi is very indicative. The city literally stands on the richest deposits of natural gas and coal, which in due time will begin to be actively developed, and the closer this moment, the more residents there will be in Kanbashi. If in 2007 about 30 thousand people lived there, now there are more than 100 thousand, and although the city still gives the impression of a deserted city, the dynamics of the increase in the number of its inhabitants is purely positive. Ordos, of which Kanbashi is a part, is China's richest city, with a per capita GDP double that of metropolitan Beijing.
One of the foundations of Chinese socio-economic policy is the deliberate urbanization of the country. Every year about 10 million people move there from villages to the city, all of them need to live somewhere. And if not today, then tomorrow in the absolute majority of local "ghost towns" ordinary life will seethe. A decade ago, Shanghai Pudong also resembled the scenery for some dystopia, and now it is a world-famous district with dozens of skyscrapers, a showcase of new China.
