Hong Kong media released a map of "ghost cities" in the Mainland, which is densely distributed in the northeast

China Paint Network
: Hong Kong media said that in the center of Guizhou City, Guiyang Province (Note: the original text is wrong, Guiyang City, Guizhou Province), there are two buildings that have been under construction more than half. The two buildings share a sly resemblance to the collapsed World Trade Center in New York. When completed, the two buildings will be 406 metres high.
Hong Kong media released a map of the mainland "ghost town" in the northeast distribution is dense
Hong Kong's South China Morning Post website reported on March 19th that it was part of a major local construction project that also included a luxury shopping mall, an amusement park and even a wetland reserve. Behind the local government, there is the power of developers to support. They hope the project will attract 500,000 residents to the area.
but there is a problem: some experts worry that the Rmb90bn property project will end up turning the area into a "ghost town". In the southwestern provinces of the mainland, it is not uncommon for tall buildings to be surprisingly large, but empty.
reported that as of last year, 16 large-scale projects were under construction or completed in Guizhou alone. Each of these projects has a sales area of more than 1 million square meters and provides enough housing to supply more than a quarter of the city's population. Not just Guiyang, but in capital cities such as Wuhan, Nanjing and Hefei, these unprecedented expansion projects are in full swing. The wave has sparked a heated debate among academics, property developers and policymakers about whether these cities are creating more and more "ghost cities".
reported that "ghost cities" in Western countries are usually caused by war, natural disasters, disease or failed economies, but this is not the case in the mainland. In the mainland, local governments have rushed to develop projects in an attempt to push up GDP growth and reach urbanization targets. Ghost cities are often created in the process.
real estate is a key pillar of the mainland economy. According to the latest figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, nearly 12% of the mainland's GDP in 2014 came from new home sales. The ratio is similar to the year last year.
in mature economies, such as the US, the proportion remains around 10 per cent, lower than in the mainland, according to the CLSA property research. Even in Hong Kong, a city considered an important investment, real estate accounted for only 8 to 9 per cent of GDP between 1997 and 1998, before the housing bubble burst.
local governments want to profit from large tracts of land, many of the mainland's third-tier cities have failed to build. Here, third-tier cities include 74 relatively economically dynamic small and medium-sized cities that often do not provide enough job opportunities to continue to attract people from other places to migrate.
reported that Guizhou's GDP per capita ranks among the bottom in the mainland. Compared with the rest of Guizhou province, Guiyang's welfare system and infrastructure are in better condition and can attract people to the city, but in the short term, this does not constitute a high enough influx of people.
cities such as Sanya, Changzhou, Zhangzhou and Wenzhou are also filled with vacant buildings or rotting buildings. At night, these buildings light up some strange lights in the dark - someone lives there. Sanya is a popular coastal city, but tourists make up a large proportion of the temporary population. Other less developed cities have failed to attract people there because they are too remote, cold or do not provide enough jobs.
However, according to media reports in 2013, a survey covering 12 provinces found that 133 and 67 of the 144 municipalities and 161 township-level cities, respectively, plan to build "new cities" in the coming years.
reported that excessive urbanization has raised doubts about whether the number of "ghost towns" in the mainland will continue to grow, especially as the central government slows speculative purchases and slows the pace of property price increases.
2014, CLSA published an in-depth study on the phenomenon of "ghost cities" in the mainland, which is expected to become more empty in the next five years.
CLSA report is based on field trips to 609 construction projects in 12 mainland cities. The report found that 15 per cent of buildings completed between 2009 and 2014 had a vacancy rate, meaning 10.2 million units were vacant. America's vacancy rate is 10 per cent, and on the face of it, there is little to worry about on the mainland. But the bigger problem, says the report, is that for remote, low-value property projects, vacancy rates are 17 per cent. The mainland has never released official figures on urban vacancy rates. Experts and scholars have also failed to agree on the best way to calculate vacancy rates.
South China Morning Post compiled a map of "ghost cities" in the mainland based on experimental models by Chen Qin, a mainland economic researcher. Chen Qin's model is based on two main indicators, including the future ratio of supply and demand, and whether the number of units supplied is surplus or insufficient against the number of existing housing units in a city. Although this statistical approach is flawed, it can help to understand areas that could develop into "ghost cities" where housing supply is projected to exceed demand by 2020.
map shows that "ghost cities" are densely distributed in the north-east of the interior, where the economy is heavily dependent on natural resources, heavy industry and agriculture, the Associated Press reported. In this region, economic diversity is insufficient to provide a wide range of employment opportunities.
known as the "ghost town" in the interior is Ordos, which topped Chen Qin's second index. This is in line with the results of the CLSA report, which predicts that the situation in the empty city of Kombash, Ordos New District, will continue to be serious over the next five years.
in the east of the mainland, "ghost cities" are widely distributed in coastal areas of Shandong Province. The local government hopes to promote the further development of tourism through the springing up of resorts along the coast. However, some researchers are wary of labeling these cities "ghost cities". The Mainland Real Estate Information Group, which studies the real estate market, said its 2013 "Ghost Town" report showed that labelling a city a "ghost town" if it experienced an oversupply of homes in the short term was unfair and irresponsible. In particular, he dismissed the gloomy forecast for Guiyang, saying it was an attractive city for people in other parts of the province because provincial capitals were often given priority in social welfare, infrastructure and economic development.
, a former research fellow at harvard's Housing Research Institute, agrees. He said it would be inaccurate to refer to a city as a "ghost town" based on future oversupply alone. Multiple ownership rights (multiple properties owned by a family) have left many units in the city vacant.
"How much impact will these vacant homes have on urban life?" You must observe before you draw a conclusion. In general, he says, people need to be cautious when looking for "ghost cities". "People are too keen to find 'ghosts' and are likely to label any place as 'ghost town'."