The mystery of Chinese ghost towns (12 photos) (text)

You've probably all heard about ghost towns in China. These are the pictures that are circulating all over the Internet.

Why does China build large, well-designed ghost cities that sit completely empty?

Photos from Google Earth of city after city show huge complexes consisting of office skyscrapers, government buildings, residential buildings, residential towers and houses, all connected by a network of empty roads, and some of the cities are located in some of the most inhospitable places in China.

Images of these ghost towns (after countless billions of dollars spent on design and construction) show that no one lives in them.

The photos look like a giant film set, set up for the filming of some apocalyptic film in which a neutron strike or unknown natural disaster has wiped out people, leaving skyscrapers, sports stadiums, parks and roads completely untouched. One of these cities was actually built in the middle of the desert, in inner Monogolia."

Business Insider published a series of photos of these Chinese ghost towns. None of them show cars, with the exception of about 100 parked in a large vacant lot near the government building, and another one, which depicts a beautiful park, and people added in a photo editor.

According to some estimates, there are now about 64 million empty houses in China. China is building up to 20 new ghost towns a year in its “vast areas of free land.”

Everything would be fine, but then I came across some kind of crazy explanation for this circumstance. Listen here!

At the moment, there are about 100 million-plus cities in China. And these newly built ghost towns are a reserve fund for the population. In case of war. There is no point in bombing them; there are many more important targets. And existing residential cities will definitely be struck, and most likely nuclear. It is expensive to restore them during the war, and such gigantic masses of people cannot be shoved through the cracks. It is much more profitable and easier to rebuild entire cities with ready-made infrastructure in advance, and at the right time to evacuate the remaining population and surviving equipment from factories and factories.

But there is one very unpleasant moment here. Keep in order.

Let's still read the real version.

Dai District, Huizhou City, Guangdong Province, covers an area of ​​more than 20 square meters. km. Over the course of several years, it has been actively developed and has a fully formed infrastructure. However, for several years now about 70% of the living space there has been empty, which has turned it into a real “ghost town.”

According to the Chinese newspaper Daily Economic Bulletin, the new Dai district is located 70 km from the Shenzhen metropolis; literally in a matter of years it was completely built up with both residential, administrative and business buildings. However, on the wide streets between high-rise buildings it is very rare to see passers-by.

Since real estate prices in this area are 4-5 times lower than in neighboring Shenzhen, residents of the metropolis bought apartments here. But they did this solely as an investment, hoping that over time the prices for this property would rise. They themselves do not live there, they only visit occasionally.

Their assumptions turned out to be correct; over the past few years, property prices in the area have more than doubled. On average, a square meter now costs 5,000 yuan ($714).

The new city is like an area after an epidemic in which a small part of the population has survived. You can rarely see light in the windows of high-rise buildings.

“All the apartments here have been sold a long time ago, but most of the owners do not live in them. Less than 20% of the residents live here permanently,” says a security guard at one of the neighborhoods.

Local residents joke: “Nothing grows here except empty houses.”

Forensic Asia Limited in its report points out the existence of numerous empty areas in China, the so-called “ghost towns”.

The Zhengdong New Area of ​​Shenzhou, Henan Province has been named the largest "ghost town" and a landmark area of ​​the real estate bubble in China. The area began to be built in 2003, it covers an area of ​​150 square meters. km. For several years now it has been less than 40% occupied.

After this information was widely publicized in the media, a local official completely rejected it in an interview with the Chinese Business newspaper. In turn, he stated that the current occupancy rate of new buildings is 90%, and the number of residents of the Zhengdong region has already exceeded 300 thousand people.

However, according to the same authorities, more than 30% of the planned development of the area has already been built, and the population level given by the official is only 7.5% of the planned number of residents, which by 2020, according to the project, should be 4 million people .

Last year, Chinese media reported that the State Grid Company of China conducted a study in 660 cities. As a result, it was discovered that the electric meters of 65.4 million apartments had zero readings for six months. This suggests that no one lives in the apartments. These apartments are enough to accommodate 200 million people.

Chinese economist Xie Guozhong believes that 25% - 30% of new buildings in China remain empty. According to him, the area of ​​residential premises in Chinese cities is 17 billion square meters. m, which is enough to accommodate all the residents of China.

When the financial crisis began, many Chinese businessmen began to transfer their capital from production to real estate in order to somehow avoid bankruptcy. Thus, many houses and apartments in the country were bought just for the sake of investing money. But this was also the main reason for the sharp increase in real estate prices, which the authorities still cannot bring under control.

The fact is that for some time, due to the construction boom and the global economic crisis that reduced the appetites and opportunities of developers, a hitherto unprecedented type of ghost towns arose in China. This is a comfortable residential property, with all the infrastructure necessary for a modern person, in which no one lives. And if we don’t settle in it, everything will be overgrown with weeds, like in Pripyat.

The construction boom has poured trillions of yuan into new empty cities designed for 64 million inhabitants. Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus can be resettled into these 20 clean (for now) kingdoms of new buildings.

An elderly man pushes a cart as he crosses the road separating completed buildings from those still under construction.

Construction in progress. Workers are chopping the walls of a future shopping center for non-existent residents of an apartment complex.

Monument. A pedestrian walks down the street behind a giant sculpture depicting two horses in Lingyuinli Square, Kangbashi district.

Why are they empty? Firstly, most of these apocalyptic ghost towns are built far from busy trade routes and large enterprises, far from civilization, in places almost undeveloped by man. Secondly, the price of real estate has jumped up and now it is such that the average Chinese, who cannot “raise” his credit, will not buy apartments God knows where. It’s cheaper and more fun to live in Shanghai, “in a cage.”