Retrieve Ghost Cities Of China: The Story Of Cities Without People In The World's Most Populated Country Translated By Wade Shepard Presented As File
not sure I understand why China is doing what they are doing, It sound to me like they are bulldozing people's homes to build new poor quality buildings in their place, People own their homes, but not the land they are on, so they have no recourse if the government decides they want something else on that land.
The are new poor quality buildings, sometimes whole cities, that have never been inhabited, Nothing is expected to last more than a few decades before it gets bulldozed for something new, It is a waste of resources on a colossal scale,
I would've given itif there had been photos, but maybe that wasn't possible, Ever since I moved to China in, I have wanted to read a book like Wade Shepards Ghost Cities of China: The Story of Cities Without People in the Worlds Most Populated Country, published by Zed Books in.
Since living these past six years in Beijing and Shanghai, I have developed the habit of going on long, meandering walks through unfamiliar parts of the city.
During these excursions, I quickly noticed that the older, decaying communities near where I lived, the very enclaves that gave my adopted hometowns their unique character, often transformed into piles of rubble without notice.
I was left to wonder Where did that noodle shop go
What happened to that great jianbing guy
How about those kids that were playing in the street just last week
Sometimes in the week after the destruction of an urban village, masons would build a wall around the newly freed land.
Sometimes the lot just lied in ruin for months, And sometimes construction workers and equipment swooped in and began the process of transmogrification into vertical grayblack office spires, White collar workers then spent their day there, perhaps grabbing a coffee at lunch in the overpriced cafe on the first floor, and vacated the premises at the end of the business day in favor of apartments in newly built skyscraper boxes over an hour away in the suburbs.
A neighborhood that once teemed with activity at all times of the day and night was left eerily empty in the dark,
What is the logic behind this process
I knew that Chinese real estate was ridiculously expensive, but never quite grasped all of the complex machinations that facilitated its development from communal property into a quasiprivate form of individual financial asset for the laobaixing.
Thankfully, Wade Shepard provides a thorough primer on the subject, Because approximately onefifth of Chinas GDP is related to the real estate industry, anyone interested in the contemporary Chinese economy should read this thoroughly entertaining and highly informative book.
Wade Shepard is an experienced freelance journalist, His crisp and clean writing style reflects years on the beat for Forbes, South China Morning Post, and countless other reputable sources.
The book is based on twoplus years of research, travel, and interviews with experts and people on the ground, His clear, nononsense approach is a welcome reprieve for this professor, who probably reads too many academic articles and dissertations converted for publication.
Ghost Cities comes in at just overpages and is comprised of ten mostly narrativebased chapters, The first and last chapters serve as introduction and conclusion without being termed as such, Chaptersthroughaddress the variety of topics needed to understand the unprecedented and uniquely Chinese phenomenon of largescale urbanization, “Clearing the Land” Chapterdescribes the nature and necessity of local government land sales to private developers, Some cities are so desperate for the cash and recognition that accompany GDP growth that they have literally moved mountains in order to create highervalue marketable land.
“Powering the New China” Chapterexplains the monumental task of providing electricity to one billion urban dwellers, Though China is poised to become a leader in alternative energy for decades to come, it has an insatiable demand that dictates a longterm reliance on dirty coal power as well.
By, the country will have installed over,gigawatts of annual electricity supply production an installed base that is approximately twoandahalf times that of the United States.
Other chapters describe in detail the nature of the “ghost city” appellation so eagerly employed by Western media outlets like Minutes, Business Insider, and Time.
In fact, Shepard successfully argues that the term “ghost city” itself is a misnomer, With connotations inherited from Americas old Wild West, it implies the depopulation of a formerly thriving center of commerce, When you say “ghost city” in America, thoughts turn to old mining towns, abandoned Catskills mountaintop resorts, and strip hotels along Route, But the character of “ghost cities” in China is exactly the opposite,
In this sense, the Western media offers a criticism that is woefully misplaced, Zhengdong New District in Zhengzhou, Nanhui in Shanghai, Tianjins Ecocity, and even infamous deserted desert district Ordos Kangbashi have all seen millions of people inhabit these areas after their embarrassing "ghost city" exposure.
If you pause to think about it for just a second, that is the way it should work, These cities are built in anticipation of a flood of new residents, They are not going to reach capacity in a year, They probably will not even reach capacity in a decade, In a country where only onefifth of its,billion people lived in cities at the beginning of Deng Xiaopings grand hybrid capitalist experiment and which has literally only just reached the halfway point in its goal of having one billion urban citizens by, how else is this process going to work This Field of Dreams “build it and they will come” philosophy is absolutely necessary.
The Party perceives Chinese urbanization as a priority for a variety of reasons, The primary reason is quite simple, Urban dwellers consume more. Thus, they contribute significantly more to GDP in the long run than selfsufficient farmers, In the short run, permanent construction offers a temporary super boost to GDP, Shepard lists a variety of other
reasons as well, Another reason perhaps is to limit the chance of rural revolt by reversing the Mao maxim “the countryside surrounds the city, ” In future China, it is clear that “the city surrounds the countryside”, Thus, for ambitious Party leaders, rapid urban development is a good way to earn a promotion,
This immutable aspect of human nature the desire to succeed in one's individual career explains a lot about the nature of Chinas local debt problem.
Indeed, various sources cite Chinese net debt as approachingtrillion, The success of temporary city leaders increasingly relies on the undertaking of grandiose projects like the creation of endless central business districts, shopping malls, and Westernstyle suburbs.
These projects require extensive financing, forcing cities to become ever more dependent on land sales for income to service these massive debts,
But Shepard points out what should be obvious to Western China doomsayers like Gordon Chang, who wrote The Coming Collapse of China.
. . in! Partyoperated locales mostly owe debt to Partyoperated financial institutions, These same banks and funds have consistently shown a willingness to restructure this debt to accommodate the successful realization of government goals, And its not like these new infrastructure investments are all sunk cost leviathans, They do earn money. Eventually. For example, the current Prime Minister Li Keqiang initiated a,billion investment in Zhengzhous Zhengdong New District in, However, in a scant ten years later, its economy was growing at a healthy clip aroundand already returning,billion in annual tax revenues to Beijing, For economists like myself who prefer to take the longterm view, thats a pretty healthy return on investment! Aside from Shenzhen and Shanghais Pudong District, the classic examples of Chinese development success, this book provides many examples of flourishing urban planning.
The only aspect of this book that I found fault with was the authors claim that the Chinese “housing market is readjusting and topping out”.
In, Chinese real estate prices increased an average ofnationwide, But this criticism does not disprove the main thesis of Ghost Cities,
With just a little patience, most but probably not all of Chinas “ghost cities” will likely be accretive to GDP and contribute to the “grand strategy” of Chinese leadership.
Sadly, the West often lacks these qualities the ability to think in decades instead of quarters, the ability to execute and complete largescale projects when it comes to finance and economics.
A little “boots on the ground” perspective goes a long way,
Note: To see this review with pictures, go sitelinkhere, Quite interesting and comprehensive read, although repetitive at times,
The conclusion somehow reminds me of the song sitelink梯田 by my favourite Taiwanese artist,
Why cant I see the terraced fields
There are a lot more hotels
Living and watching Western films inside
The water buffaloes have merely become pictures
Hanging on the walls
A symbol of the rich getting ever richer
Groups of foreigners want to look outside the windows at the scenery
But they can only see hotels with more storys than yours
Is humanity in a tight corner
Wrecking the natural wildlife
Is that hard work
Can we only use video recordings
To give the next generation, the next generation a wake up call
Pitiful, lamentable the green forest has already been made into a documentary
That smell of green is gone You can only enjoy the heavy pollution
Oh, my dear cows
Oh, where have you run off to
translated by sitelinkdraagon
A very readable profile on the Chinese real estate market, which provides unique insight on the legal and cultural structures that contribute to that market's strange conditions.
However, I must fault the author with providing economic analysis that fails to uphold basic economic principles, The author falls into the common trap of people who study China,
Many choose their study of China because of their love and admiration for the country, This leads to an overwhelming compulsion to proclaim everything China does as a success, This is shortsighted, but not unique to this book, Nothing too special here, as it reads like a very very long article, with sprinkles of personal reflection, Often the numbers stack up and you realize you are sortie reading the same thing over and over again, Repetition can be nice, but this just spoke over itself to get thatpage landmark in the bag, Still, incredibly informative and also terrifying, China still proceeds to do this to its neighborhoods and economy even when its clearly destroying its people, Like they give a damn, . .
Read for a project for my Chinese History Class, Sensitive investigation of pressing issue that takes China on its own terms, Over the next couple of decades, it is estimated thatmillion Chinese citizens will move from rural areas into cities, pushing the countrys urban population over one billion.
China has built hundreds of new cities and urban districts over the past thirty years, and hundreds more are set to be built byas the central government kicks its urbanization initiative into overdrive.
As China redraws its map with new cities, it isn't just creating new urban areas, but also engineering a new culture and way of life.
Yet, many of these new cities, such as the infamous Kangbashi and Yujiapu, stand nearly empty, construction having ground to a halt due to the loss of investors and colossal debt.
In Ghost Cities of China, Wade Shepard examines this phenomenon up close, He posits that the shedding of traditional social structures in the country is at an advanced stage, and a rootless, consumptioncentric globalized culture is rapidly taking its place.
Incorporating interviews and ontheground investigation, Ghost Cities of China examines Chinas underpopulated modern cities and the countrys overly ambitious building program.
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