China

Sup w them ghost cities? Is this a thing or not?

Short answer is yes. Even in prosperous first tier cities we are looking at home/office vacancy rates in the 10-30% range.

As you go inland and north east, the vacancy rates are higher and often are concentrated in failed new development projects. Add projects that have halted construction and you get a lot of places that could be fairly called ghost cities.

Some ghost cities of the past filled out over time but China has reached a point of population decline. They still have room to urbanize more but there is already enough housing stock for all the urban population growth for the forseeable future. The problem is most of that growth will be in economically prosperous areas and the inland ghost towns today won’t really get a lot of that growth.

name a ghost city then grizy

kangbashi is still at >85% housing vacancy. A few years ago they enticed people to live there by forcing prestigious high schools to move to the district so that might start going down.

After 15 years though, I think that type of vacancy should qualify it as a ghost town

Did a lot of them end up getting a massive amount of people moving to them? I haven't followed this in years but it was a major problem then.

Some did. Most are still trying to fill with some that are still mostly empty.

which ones grizy? which ones?

i covered this when mindflayer mentioned the "china ghost city problem" in the tsla showing cracks thread

It’s an urban sprawl bigger than Philadelphia and you think I’m being pedantic?

Interesting, thanks for the posts.

a - if we start isolating the districts then there are thousands of "ghost cities" throughout the world, including the USA - which is why it's absurd

this means I technically grew up next to a ghost city in massachusetts

pittsfield mass has tons and tons of empty buildings and there's entire districts which are just rundown and decrepit - it's such an issue that each year the town puts money together to demolish abandoned storefronts and homes

there's entire streets there that are empty, most of the downtown businesses collapsed, an entire strip mall is abandoned

that's my point, that once you start ntipicking to "well this district of that city has high vacancy so it's a ghost city" then the word lacks all meaning entirely and everything everywhere becomes a ghost city

there are areas of manhattan where there's more unoccupied commercial real estate than occupied, but would it would be insane to call that a ghost city

look at kangbashi on the map, it's just a handful of city blocks, that "urban sprawl" you're referencing is just empty steppe

you can also clearly see how the majority of it is still undeveloped, they built the roads already but haven't yet begun construction - it wasn't a "build everything all at once"

while still going at lightspeed, everything is still clearly being done in stages and we're still at the very beginning

There are definitely lots of empty districts in China. The city I lived in had a massive one. I had a friend who lived in one in Shanghai, the entire had maybe 10% occupancy and 1 restaurant serving several blocks. Oddly enough there was one cafe there too which was a cat cafe. It sounds like there's a good chance the area might have filled up though.

also, lol at the "urban sprawl size of philadelphia" comparison

you're confusing arbitary sizes of land, the thought of comparing one of the highest denisity population areas in the western world to a desert steppe in mongolia is lol, especially with the "urban sprawl" addition

the government of ordos saw a long term influx of people from the countryside to ordos, this was causing housing shortages, they saw that kangbashi was a districut of land that was largely empty & under their jurisdiction so they steered development there

the "infamous ghost city" is just a few city blocks

meanwhile, this is how your typical ordos migrant worker from the countryside is living, there is a demand for these homes, the issue is an "over supply of homes" but rather that "wealthy speculators buy up the new properties and sit on them as investments so adding new units doesn't have the 1:1 housing alleviation they desire"

you see these temporary dorms all over the country because there's no place for people to live

inside those they are packed like sardines

places like ordos which have a lot of empty land around them have tent settlements surrounding them where the migrant workers live and they can easily commute in to their jobs in the city

making temporary shelters out of shipping containers is a real thing

when i lived in Beijing, every apartment complex I lived in had underground attachments which when built were intended to double as parking garages and storage units or even atomic shelters if they were built in the cold war (marshall publicly stating we should nuke china will have that effect)

none of those are used that way, they have all been converted into migrant housing, if you walk down the ramp that was designed to have cars drive down but nobody drives in anymore then you'll see the bunks and see how open and exposed these people are because they have no privacy nor walls, you turn the corner and then boom, you see this

this is what they look like from the outside, this one here was converted into a shop

you realize people are now going to be posting about shanghai being a ghost city now 😀

I agree, Pittsfield mass is a ghost town. But the opposite kind. It boomed then bust. Kangashi has only bust so far. And yeah the units sell, but stay empty. You already explained the reason.

Best numbers I could find were 67% unoccupied, which is way better than 90% but still empty af.

If you want to say, see me in 5-10 years bro, I’m down with that but hand waving the scale because it’s a “district” in Chinese nomenclature is being nit picky, in my opinion. Even if the intended population is 500,000 that’s still a top 40 city in the US.

i think those are fair points

I don’t even know what rickroll is posting but I have no doubt he is defending the CCP’s choices and possibly denying a problem that even the CCP doesn’t deny.

grizy, your "he's a ccp plant" whenever you get called out for posting nonsense schtick is growing tired

i know it must be tough for you because you previously considered yourself a china expert around these parts and got away with it and no longer can't because there's enough us now who actually do understand the coutnry and you've lost that special status you held so dearly

just admit you don't actually know anything or at least stop with the personal attacks - you look really stupid every time you do this

I am looking for the truth about ghost cities in China.
For background, I consider myself knowledgeable in Real Estate. I have a Civil Engineering Degree but have not practiced for +30 years. Way back when, I did take a course in City Planning.
I have three licenses Rental, HOA/Strata, and Trading in Real Estate. I am a long time Real Estate Investor. I have Real Estate investments in 3 States and 3 Provinces.

I especially follow the ongoing Economic situation in China, of which the term Ghost City is just one symptom.
The reason I follow the goings on in China is to find out where the money is going and get there before the big push happens. When I am convinced of a situation, I usually make big "bets." (large investments with some conviction) Like Warren Buffet says, you do not have to take a swing at every pitch, but when one is right in the zone, you take your swing.

One of the key concepts that I have used in my North American real estate portfolio is to know where planned infrastructure is going in and to invest there before it gets built. One of the situations got all messed up but ended up ok. Ie. A large civil infrastructure was being built in an area, and I bought a warehouse in the area that would be serviced by it and was expecting a large boost in RE prices in that area. Large areas of trees were cut down, a few million m^3 of soil was placed for soil compaction etc. Construction was just starting.... then a year later the pro development government got voted out and the project was cancelled! I still ended up making 7 figures on that investment as when covid hit, retailers were shutting down and warehouse prices shot way up. .. The retailers went online and stopped paying for retail space and just need a warehouse at a quarter of the rent/sqf; and a shipping area to package/ship goods.

For this discussion, I think we have to define ghost city first.

In North America, ghost "city." is not really a thing. Ghost towns however are common and are/were towns formed for the exploitation of a certain natural resource such as gold or some other mineral. When the gold dried up or other mineral fell out of favor such as coal, the main employer of the town closed and everyone move(s) away; leaving a ghost town. These towns usually never get past 20,000 people.
By this definition, China does not have any.

According to Google "A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town or abandoned city" is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings.
By this definition, China does not have any.

What is common is for disgruntled Chinese residents to use the term, as in the following video to describe, one of two situations.
1) Where a city is planned and completely built out but has an occupation rate of under 25%.
2) Were a city is planned and 10's or even 100's of the skeletons of buildings are built, but not completed, due to the financial failure of the Developer, such as Evergrand, Country Garden, or Sunac.

I believe the following video names 6 or 7 of these types of "Ghost Cities" please note, often it is the owner or worker doing a video of their property calling the area a "Ghost City" not me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMaVyMxM...

Important time stamps at 4:00 min 7:00 min and 9:00 min.
Also note that I consider The poster China Observer fairly anti China.
4:00 identifies one of China's Structural Problems... Their Tax System.
7:00 identifies a Ghost City that is now over 19 years old. I watched a separate video of this posted two years ago by an owner who said it is still empty after 17 years.
9:00 identifies MY common strategy of investing in an area Before the money flows into that area. BUT in China, it was used in response to a GDP goal set (Previously 10%, now reduced to 5% GDP Growth) by the party and not as a natural development due to demand already in THAT AREA.

If I was told by a high level government official in China that they were going to build a High Speed rail station and a city between two major cities in China and I had the option of making a 500k bet for bare land in that area, I would pass. I might be wrong and miss out, but I would still pass.

This post is long enough already but I can speak to any or all of these topics in detail.

A budding Axis of Fascism

“US says China is supplying missile and drone engines to Russia”

https://on.ft.com/3xHi8bm

I'm not sure the Chinese, Russians, North Koreans, and Iranians are the axis of anything. More just like the Really Rottens.

My understanding is China needs Russian and Iranian natural resources to function, and it needs markets to buy all the **** it produces. We should probably view China's complicated relationship with Russia and Iran similarly to our own relationship with the Gulf States when they were actively spreading Wahhabism to the world.

Do you think they spread Wahhabism without the support of the US? How are you supposed to have a global war on terror without terrorists?