This Spring, while on vacation in Croatia, I had some interesting conversations with a Sri Lankan international consultant. He told me some shocking news that I had never heard ... that China has built several "ghost cities" of large apartment buildings and factories without their utilities turned on ... capable of housing 7 to 8 million people. Since then, researching this subject, I have seen much larger estimates of 'ghost' housing capacities ... up to 30 million.
This, to me, is astounding news ... see: BBC Story. And this article suggests that the central planners in China had anticipated massive migration from rural areas to these new cities.
The obvious question is, Was this the only reason for such a waste of resources. Such ghost cities smack a lot like digging millions of holes and then filling them in. And I do wonder how much all this empty economic activity has contributed to this country's impressive GNP growth? My guess is that it added close to a trillion dollars ... ironically, about the size of Obama's stimulus program in 2009,
For some more views of these empty cities please go to: Business Insider Gallery.
The fellow who put me onto this phenomenon also told me that this year 10 million Chinese will be passengers on airlines ... and, by 2020, this number will grow to 50 million. Wow!
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