We all know that China, in its financial glory, has booming construction everywhere. Their skyscrapers can go as tall as 850 feet. They even built a stadium to host the 2008 Olympics! But beneath these beautiful architecture is a dark side of China’s development boom.
According to UK’s Daily Mail, Chinese government think tank warns that the country’s real estate bubble is getting worse. In the satellite image below, one would think that this town in China is well planned and developed. But when you enter the place, it is eerily quiet, stop lights work even without cars driving down the road, empty malls, and beautiful condominium units are still unoccupied.
Bayyanao is one of the many empty cities in China
Dongguan mall, supposedly the largest mall in asia, has been empty for the past six years.
It’s all about the math. The reason for the non-stop construction of China is to keep their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) up. But it’s not about the quantity of GDP but the quality. Even if they have all these developments, an ordinary Chinese cannot afford to buy a condo unit which costs around $100,000, and the average Chinese household earns $900 a month. An excellent documentary of the Business Insider (above) explains it well.
This village has been vacant since 2005
One of the many eerie empty streets of China's ghost cities
