China's Ghost Cities: The Truth Behind The Empty Megacities

China's Ghost Cities House 64 Million Empty Apartments
The skyscrapers are empty, the streets are without traffic, and a chilling silence emanates throughout the area. These are the scenes of China’s ghost cities.
These streets resemble abandoned or evacuated cities from a zombie or nuclear apocalypse movie. But nobody even lived here in the first place.
China’s economic plan to build into oblivion has transformed it into the world’s second biggest economy in a short space of time. But do these empty cities show the ugly side of this economic boom? Let’s take a look.
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[@joechang8696]

I am surprised post-apocalypse movies are not filmed in these cities

[@ripwednesdayadams]

I was gonna say I’m surprised they aren’t used as movie sets.

[@markfaraday9204]

Because china has complex rules

[@ariancontreras4358]

Well they aren’t going to let foreigners in because that’s let’s the outside world see failure. And I guess the Chinese filmmakers do it because that’s admitting failure to their own people.

[@johna.4334]

@@markfaraday9204 Commie China has a complex?

[@gravityissues5210]

My god, they have an abandoned Paris, Manhattan, London….it’s screaming for movies.

[@frankgrima]

Buildings require maintenance whether occupied or not, the longer the building remains empty will result in decay.

[@smarshall8450]

Yes that's exactly right. The earth will begin to reclaim what is not maintained

[@dolfoboynas9583]

Serves them Right for always striving for World Domination 😂😂

[@junielesparas8018]

I can’t imagine how much trillions worth of maintenance of these ghost cities to function ...

[@mauricedavis2160]

Exactly what I was thinking!!!🙏🤔

[@crystal2484]

Those developers do not even have money to pay the banks.

[@BradlyFC]

"and who wants to live in a ghost town?" *dislocates shoulder after raising hand too fast*

[@tluzanov]

WHY the hell would you? You might say you like the peace and quite but I am sure the novelty wouyld wear off fairly quick. No stores, no gas stations, no restaurants, no friends or neighbors to chill or at least talk too. Sure, you can talk or video on the phone, but its a lousy substitute. More likely than not, you will end up like that dude from the movie "The Shining"

[@zolombox1779]

Brave of you to assume people who want to live alone have friends.

[@furyex4765]

@@zolombox1779 Facts

[@tluzanov]

Even if you have no friends, you still need to have access to basic amenities to survive. There are those that can survive with some land for a personal garden and some farm animals, but that would be pretty tough in a concrete jungle ghost town. where you gonna get groceries? Would you even be able to get internet? would cellphone work? Depends on how far away you are from the next populated town, or at least some kind of store. with no subway or public transportation, if you don't have a personal vehicle, riding a bike or as a last resort, walking could take days.

[@BradlyFC]

@@tluzanov All of those activities involve interacting with people. I stand strong with my original comment. I'll cave-man it and eat dirt and wipe with my hand.

[@harrymills2770]

Only government can force the misallocation of resources on this scale. Imagine what all that money and resources could have done...

[@2.Plus.2.Equals.5]

Imagine what all that money REALLY went towards. These are just covers.

[@cool-0501]

@@2.Plus.2.Equals.5 政府并没有花钱，失败的是房地产商和投资者。政府通过土地出售挣钱，当然，修建基础设施是花钱了。

[@SomeRandomWorm]

As a person who lives in a “ghost” city its eerie. The city itself has over half a million people but, when the recession hit all of the money left Baltimore. They closed the Louis Vuitton Stores and Tiffany’s and every designer store in Baltimore. It never recovered so when you still walk down certain streets you can see what once used to be a wealthy shopping district. Baltimore is filled with empty decaying buildings and crime is quite high, with all of the money gone it has become uneducated making their offices abandoned. Its eerie to look at a map and see the massive size of the city and see what it once was compared to modern day, where there’s no high end boutiques, no fancy restaurants, no super car stores. Baltimore is slowly getting better but its weird entering my once favorite mall with half of the stores being closed and the only “fancy” store left in Baltimore in a Chanel store in the wealthiest district.

[@ArtDuneharp-Law]

1

[@emmapeel8163]

it's not getting better

[@kattias]

i'm from toledo, ohio - smack in the middle of the rust belt. visited baltimore last year after a few years living on the east coast. seeing the empty streets downtown made me feel like i was visiting home.

[@awesomeonesmad2105]

Also from Baltimore. Live in the county now, but it is very eerie seeing what’s left of the city

[@random_an0n]

you dont live in a ghost city you live in a hood,all the fancy white shit is now moving out and its all cause you capped for a fent addict and threw a innocent cop in jail for it. yall wouldnt stop robbin and now cause anyone with more than 2 cents has moved out so have the nice companies who are also sick of being robbed too.

[@Makeitblue127]

I lived in Zhongshan for a year 2018-2019. It was amazing to watch how fast skyscraper apartment buildings were built, 24/7. I was also shocked and confused why they kept building when most of the buildings were nearly empty.

[@doposud]

tbh i was impressed how fast they build highways, over 8 000km in 1 year..... Corrupted MF's in my country take years to repair few kilometers, we have build 1200km of highways in 60 years.

[@WorldIsWierd]

@@doposud problem is this is corrupt just in a different way

[@user-bq3ch1ps8q]

@@doposud its definitaly terrible working conditions

[@meowchat6175]

I know why but nobody will listen to what I have to say.

[@酉神]

你应该问问你自己，为何你认为空着的房子，而街上却那么多人

[@trashyraccoon2615]

Why don’t they build in phases? Creating a whole city at once and hoping for the best? Seems so ridiculous and risky

[@CoolGobyFish]

capitalism, that's why. the corporate developer collects money from people and builds. they don't really care if anyone lives there or not. they got their money, that's all the care about.

[@trashyraccoon2615]

@@CoolGobyFish They literally have a socialist country. The government makes the rules, so why do they allow it in this case?

[@CoolGobyFish]

@@trashyraccoon2615 nothing socialist abut them despite their name. their corporations ran amok as well. Cuba and Korea are the only ones with the real socialist economy

[@trashyraccoon2615]

@@CoolGobyFish Gotcha. Good call

[@kristoffer3000]

@@CoolGobyFish So you know literally nothing about China and socialism, good on you for making it so obvious

[@PInk77W1]

I rode my bicycle across China I was shocked to see dozens of cranes building sky scrapers in every city. All while tons of other skyscrapers sit empty. I was just oh well

[@southloopsoxfan]

How was the bike ride? Sounds amazing

[@hannnu5855]

Under China's non-compliance business laws, corruption of officials at all levels and loopholes in bank loans, building a house itself is a business that can make money without capital. Every building under construction is already a money tree If it can be completed and sold, it will be a A bigger and more perfect money tree; developing real estate in China is just a way for a group of people to make big money together, and has little to do with the real concept of developing real estate ; There are currently 2 billion residential units in China (already existing and under construction), which means that each Chinese can be allocated 1.2 units, or each standard family can have 3.5 units of housing. . . How happy?

[@darkevilazn]

@@hannnu5855 Yeah, and the only people who lose are the people getting scammed into buying a worthless property for far above market value (which in many of these buildings is basically 0 or negative). Everyone else, meanwhile, from the developer, to builder to financer, already made off with money. This reminds me of Japan's corrupt and terrible banking laws that basically tanked their economy for 30 years in which they still haven't recovered from.

[@ldaxxx1]

Classic example of a Communist government ignoring the natural laws of supply and demand. You can be sure a lot of corrupt bureaucrats and their relatives are making a fortune from these useless projects.

[@ericwong4213]

You rode bicycle across China when all Chinese are travelling with high speed train and electric cars. Why are you so poor?

[@derekc423]

@2:25 Homeless population of 300 million??? I think that is an error. From what I can tell, their homeless population is around 3 million. 300m would be a full 25% of their total population.

[@kirarakurokawa8747]

i yelled "HOLY SHIT!" when he said that

[@Craigsinglee]

It’s the truth just the 300 million live mostly in rural areas they build illegal makeshift mud houses on land that’s not theirs with no plumbing and running water, no gas it’s the same as homeless

[@kristoffer3000]

It's not even as high as 3 mill

[@garyjackson3531]

The homeless population of the United States is around 500,000, with a total population of around of 330 million. If China's homeless population was as bad as the United States', it might be around 10 million, based on a population of 1 billion.

[@tesytes318]

It's like 1.3 billion so yes its possible for 300 million to be homeless while the other billion have house or live with someone. China is basically super capitalism. The fact there's so many large empty cites yet the people who own them don't lower the prices. They hate the homeless the same Americans do. American has something like 3 million empty house and 500,000 homeless yet they are still homeless. China is just American when it comes to capitalism but with an S on their chest.

[@EmilyElizabethxox]

Anyone else curious what they look like inside? Like are the apartments carpeted/tiled, with kitchenettes, plumbing, etc? You never get to see the inside of these places, so it makes you wonder if they’re just a facade on the outside similar to a movie set.

[@sofia.szakmany]

omg yesss

[@tluzanov]

@@progo8156 Explore those unfinished apartments for a whole week? Doubt it. Although some apartments are almost done, maybe 90%, but most are completed anywhere from 50% down to 10%, meaning just a bare naked concrete structure. If you go to one of those ghost cities, just check out the apartments on a single floor in one building, and boom, you know what the rest of the 50,000 apartment units look like.

[@pedrofarkyea1]

Apparently they are bare, because furnishings actually lower the value of the units. A youtuber name scarpenza (i think that's how you spell his name?) did a video on it once.

[@todosqeremoslomismo]

There is a video by yes theory where they go to the paris one and they give you a current inside of the city and its people

[@Flat10squirrel]

its concrete floors and walls

[@FireOccator]

Absurd waste of resources.

[@bunyavissuthisorn5909]

... But they are shown in series of splendid double digits of G.D.P.

[@bogbog]

As someone who previously worked in video production, I'm baffled how these places aren't considered for locations more often. These places are awesome. On second thought, I guess populating a ghost town with vehicles, people and other props is a logistical nightmare.

[@ixiahj]

Looks great for post apocalyptic setting

[@酉神]

去那里看看，你会发现为什么

[@caladr9367]

The Chinese government does not allow the filming of anything that makes their totalitarian regime look bad. They know their property sector is a house of cards and are trying to hide this fact.

[@raven3moon]

The buildings generally have no running water. And they're made using substandard materials, and the hookups for water in case of fire are never completed. Lookup "tofu dreg construction" and "ghost cities" videos.

[@dwisamuri5600]

​@@酉神what happend? Can explain?

[@relaxedclaw]

Wasting so much land and resources building buildings that look the exact same.

[@jebes909090]

the worst part is they are so poorly constructed that they'd probably just collapse if people actually started to live in them.

[@bunyavissuthisorn5909]

... It does not matter, China has almost 1.5 billion people. Who will give a dime. .....

[@kristoffer3000]

@@jebes909090 So why hasn't that happened seeing as these are now all inhabited?

[@jebes909090]

@@kristoffer3000 except they arent

[@kristoffer3000]

@@jebes909090 Google it and come back to me, liar

[@godfreecharlie]

I can hardly believe the massive investment in faux world cities. Did they really think people would be comfortable living in a copy of other people's creation? I myself don't think I could do that.

[@jordanxfile]

Yeah, it's so weird isn't it? It feels so out of place.

[@nocomment4848]

Tbh i’d rather live in fake chinese paris than negger-infested French Paris. Diversity has destroyed that nation

[@exelenxius5832]

​@@jordanxfileThe same way fake chinatown in western country feels out of place, so not to an extent that no one will want to live in it

[@JamakiahEckert-uh7xw]

Is all greedy..

[@Jkapricorn]

these are Tofu dreg buildings made with cheap material that should not be used with construction to save costs, it's very dangerous to live in these buildings because for example, rain could happen and the buildings with suddenly collapse

[@RighteousBruce]

We do not have a resource problem as much we do a wastage problem.

[@brownwhale5518]

To many Chinese investors watched ‘Field of Dreams’ and took ‘if you build it, he will come’ as some kind of capitalistic gospel.

[@rizon72]

I saw somewhere that the people who bought apartments never intended to live there and were instead going to sell as the propriety price went up. It really seemed like a big scam and balloon waiting to pop.

[@crazycrayfish7610]

It's speculation. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

[@Tugela60]

They are just empty shells as well, since the owners modify to their tastes, and it is better to move into a place no one has lived in for some reason. So, to maintain the value of the investment they stay as empty concrete boxes. No one will want to move in because who wants to live in an appartment surrounded by empty concrete boxes? And since the critical mass for the buildings to become livable is never reached, they stay empty.

[@tslee8236]

Jobs, affordability and convenience are lacking. So no population migration.

[@rap3208]

The chinese people idea of investments is buying apartments or real state. that is hwy you have buildings still under construction and every unit is already sold.

[@mikep5695]

​@@rap3208 It's not an investment if you can never sell it!

[@andrejspetersons8500]

This reminds me of how I often play Cities:Skylines. Hit pause, build all the streets an highways, rail, subway, all stations, police, fire dept., parks, etc. Zone the free spots and then unpause. You'd think that the city would immedietely flourish, but that's not the case. It takes time.

[@minxironwood]

I think this is the perfect example/explanation to the issues going on in china. They keep building these huge sprawling buildings with all this stuff...and assume people would've just come running cash in hand. Sadly it takes years to fill city's of that size and it's crazy to assume a million people in your country have enough disposable income to justify moving down the road.

[@kristoffer3000]

@@minxironwood People have come running, cash in hand. These are now filled with people.

[@minxironwood]

@@kristoffer3000 being that I was recently in china doing some urban exploration and traveling through some of these city's...gonna have to say that's total bs lol

[@minxironwood]

@@kristoffer3000 unless your trying to saying about half a million people decided to suddenly move, two weeks after I leave the country lol

[@kristoffer3000]

@@minxironwood lmao, sure you did, buddy. Actually, I was there as well, think I saw you walking around hahahaha

[@domomonstero3077]

How many poor Chinese villages could have been rebuilt, fixed or just overhauled with all these wasted resources.

[@bruh_hahaha]

all those buildings look like prisons.

[@sexgod6909]

Exactly!!!!!!

[@cozyandahalle]

Chinese ghost cities were the original NFT. The dirty secret is that many were never built to be lived in. Many don't even have sewers or plumbing. They were built to be traded on the market and sold to gullible investors on the other side of the country, Again, not for them to move in to, but as investment that would grow in value and could then be sold to someone else.

[@glenwjohnson809]

Stop lying!

[@youtubehasbigcringe]

@@glenwjohnson80950 cents have been deposited into your account

[@mohammadalazemi5112]

good point thank you

[@zachhanson6575]

@@glenwjohnson809 well he ain't lying pal.

[@glenwjohnson809]

@@zachhanson6575 bro, the whole world knows that China has the largest population so, it needs adequate infrastructures for that, I very surprised u guys don't understand that.

[@beesod6412]

image roaming these vacant cities at night. it would be so surreal.

[@danielisaac7586]

The craziest part is that the world bought chinas bullcrap about them having 1.4 billion people. They lied about it, just like they do with their GDP and everything else in their country. China imports most of its food since most of the country is hard to farm on and some is even not possible to farm. So they import tons of their food yet around the mid 2000s before the great recession they slowed their imports of food down while at the same time claiming their population had actually grown? So what? They all started to learn to not eat? How is that even possible if your population growns so should your food imports but they decreased while at the same time their in house faming was replaced by imports why? Because they've been lying about their population size for a long time and soon it will come to bite them in the ass when suddenly there are most old people who need money to eat and not enough young people to tax to feed them.

[@AjayTiwari-en9nz]

Yeah fascinating and scary at the same time.

[@youtubetv1414]

I bet it'd be fun if it wasn't china where the government would probably institutionalize you if they catch you roaming somewhere you shouldn't be with their billion + cameras.

[@Roonasaur]

They probably don't have many lights on at night, so there wouldn't be much to see. They don't even have windows and doors.

[@bunyavissuthisorn5909]

@@Roonasaur ... Poor quality of life for being number 2 of the world.

[@Daniel-y7g5y]

A big problem in China is corruption in the construction industry, where "tofu" buildings are erected with substandard materials that start falling apart after a year.

[@roberturibe7779]

These Ghost Cities would be the Perfect setting for a Shin Godzilla Movie 😁

[@Sun_Wukong666]

I remember going to a ghost city and almost fallling yo my doom. The construction of the building is pretty poor!

[@37Kilo2]

Property should not be allowed as an investment. Houses and apartments should only ever be a place to live. The property investment boom is killing the lower classes. A home that was $250k ten years ago should not be worth double that or more. It's absurd. Rent is also wildly out of control; people paying a literal mortgage payment while not owning.

[@richardhorlings3774]

Here in Ontario, Canada, our governments tried to centrally plan a city of 250,000 called Townsend. It didnt work. Only 2000 people live there. At least they didn't build like crazy as they did in China.

[@ianstuart5660]

I'M I Ontario, what area or region are you talking about?

[@richardhorlings3774]

@@ianstuart5660 Townsend is just outside Jarvis, ON in Haldimand County, south of Hamilton.

[@ianstuart5660]

@@richardhorlings3774 Got it, thanks very much!

[@ideitbawxproductions1880]

They're trying to do the same thing with Grimsby now, converting a bunch of farmers' fields into a city. The Greater Hamilton Area is a strange place, man...

[@JamakiahEckert-uh7xw]

Hi from Switzerland 🇨🇭. We swiss don't like to build like in China. Thanks God. This is all greedy chains..

[@tielmaster7879]

Me watching from NYC. Gets casually blitzed about the condition of the city lol.

[@millevenon5853]

Problem is lack of jobs. And you can't start a business there as you won't get any customers

[@RP-ks6ly]

All of these towns appear to be cheap, Chinese knockoffs of actual world class cities. The mantra for real estate has always ben "location, location, location". None of these towns have anything close to a good location.

[@leokimvideo]

Whenever you have a dramatic boom there's always the dramatic bust that comes next. Economics 101

[@bozoclown99]

No this is far different

[@fitog5202]

Economics is bullshit

[@CrucialConflict.]

@@bozoclown99 explain...

[@komangpandehariyadi7918]

Print money created project..peoples have the money to spend...no inflation..because spend on real job. This is my personal opinion.

[@kevinswift8654]

@@CrucialConflict. cus china is bad brooo

[@DanA-xt8xy]

I dont understand how they can have hundreds of towers beside each other, and they are all exactly the same... Depressing.

[@systemakhaosu810]

At 10:51 you have a photo of New Orleans (Specifically the Central Business District looking to the French Quarter, with the Mississippi River on the right). New Orleans is notably NOT abandoned (with a population ~400,000) as well as NOT even remotely close to China.

[@DrFatDabs]

New Orleans is turning into a ghost town... Too much crime. Bourbon street the only thing keeping it..

[@RYTHMICRIOT]

I work for an American manufacturer who has pressed the importance of "buying American". About making sure we were building with American products from American companies. Eventually we had the meeting about all of these "American" companies had become companies who bought from China, and sold to us, and that there's no reason to pay a middle man, so we would be visiting China to find a direct supplier. When the people we sent over there got back to the States, all they talked about was skyscrapers being built everywhere. And this was over a decade ago.

[@davidhynes]

OMG, OMG, what a waste and here we have people living on the streets and in tent cities.

[@h8GW]

Therapist: "Bad French isn't real. It can't hurt you." Buildr: *"shamps-DIS-lisease"*

[@IOSARBX]

Buildr, awesome content I really liked it

[@matgeezer2094]

Also, who would think that building a copy of Paris or London? it's tacky as hell and embarrassing, China does have its own culture, doesn't it?

[@bunyavissuthisorn5909]

... Western styles are mesmerizing for people all across the world, but Muslim. ........

[@jayyrestrepo7759]

Why don’t they just send homeless to these buildings

[@tonyjakson5934]

It empty but maybe it was sold so this empty building has owners

[@garym8552]

Because the owners of these buildings are greedy 🤑🤑

[@Pillock25]

Knock off electronics and clothing brands is one thing, but entire cities?

[@nofilter.906]

As an American living here in china ( hangzhou),, all they do is build,,,build,,BUILD!!!...every where you look they're constructing buildings,,and all of these apts are built going up!!,20 ,30,35 floors 10 identical buildings !! And all they are ,are 2,3,4 bedroom apts units...and what they charge for 1 unit,IS ABSOLUTELY INSANE!!!!..

[@covenant_mog05]

Imagine if China actually developed its traditional architecture into a modern day cities but nope they instead chose to copy/paste what other nations already did. They have so much history to get inspiration from this is unfortunate

[@mackisbrocklesnar]

They have enough traditional architecture

[@CoolGobyFish]

same problem with Dubai. Instead of building traditional Arab cities, they chose to put up a bunch of American highrises, totally unsuited to high temp desert living.

[@drdre137]

Traditional architecture if not done well can be really tacky, and it is really expensive to build.

[@h5mind373]

Real estate represents the lionshare of investment for the Chinese population. But it's mostly mal-investment, purchasing apartments in places like this with no intention to ever live there, or even rent them out. Instead, much akin to the Dutch Tulip Mania, they expected to buy 4 or 5 places and just wait for an investor to come along and pay more. Most are still waiting.

[@Reesee000]

This they have done, along with other foreigners or newly seeded generations in San Francisco.

[@krivayacoleso]

In China, you cannot buy more than two property for one family.

[@saifis]

I always wonder they say its a ghost town, is it completely abandoned? or are there super small groups of people living there because they moved in and can't leave beacuse of financial reasons? There has to be people like that right?

[@coolrunning2006]

I believe some area are like that. I remember seeing documentary where highrise with 100+ units only have 2% occupation

[@ariancontreras4358]

Usually there a small handful of people living in some buildings. It’s like those almost dead towns that happened more organically elsewhere in the world after and economic boom usually gold/oil etc passed. And unlike them the property value doesn’t go down. Everyone has to get their services and goods from somewhere else. Well it’s the perfect place for a hermit.

[@bunyavissuthisorn5909]

Occupancy rate will say it is a ghost town or not? ....

[@rap3208]

There are people living there. It is just that they are distant from their jobs so the rate of occupancy is not that fast. But still, what they don't tell you is that it is hard for a city to grow a million people bigger. new York took about 20 years to grow to the peak population in 2019 and then the population promptly went down again at the onset of the covid pandemic. Houston took about 14-15 years to grow a million bigger but it was a boomtown. In China, their biggest cities at the peak of their growth, some became a half million to more than a million bigger in a year. These cities, they showed in the video are from years back. today, they have a few hundred thousands living in them. It just won't show because the cities were built for a million or two. but if you would calculate, they have a faster rate of growth compared to american cities.

[@asdf3568]

Most so called ghost cities aren't ghost cities for long. Some are illegal projects that are demolished by the city officials. And a small fraction of them are just bad investments.

[@lifewriter7455]

1,411,750,000 people live in China. These ghost cities might easily be full of people in a matter of short time. 🖤😎👍

[@sleepyeyes816]

All them home and no one is living in them and people living out on the street this is just crazy..

[@waltdill927]

Cash in one place, housing in the other. Odd, really, that you can't often get the two together. As some old coot once said: "Used to eat a steak dinner for 55 cents; a pack of smokes was a nickel: that was a lot of money in those days".... Yup.

[@LostandFoundTravel]

We saw SO MANY halted buildings in 2015 - And you can only leave concrete open to the elements for a short time...

[@lanceduke3522]

It’s a government ponzy scheme, Chinese are denied foreign investment, so they invest in apartments which are empty. The government dictates the rise and fall of value of apartments worth. This allows for further investment even though the cities will never be filled

[@NorceCodine]

Chinese investors drove up California real estate prices trifold. They offered immediately a hundred thousand dollars more in cash than the asking price was. Californians didn't have $1.5 million for a 3-bedroom house in San Francisco.

[@kristoffer3000]

Google these cities, they're not ghost cities anymore. Almost like you're just not very intelligent lol

[@earthstewardude]

I saw hundreds of these half finished high rise housing projects while on a 40 hour train ride from Shandong Province to Kunming. The Chinese have so much money from our consumption that they thought real estate investing was the best place to go. They Effed up big time!

[@Anthonille]

I'm willing to bet those skyscrapers are fragile. They built them to fast.

[@jbloun911]

Chinese escalators 😂

[@erinjohnson1124]

Oh my, that French pronunciation of Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Elysées was a mess. LOL Despite that I was totally intrigued by the info on this duplicate ghost city! I kinda wanna see that in person!

[@azmodanpc]

German, Italian spelling is also atrocious in many contexts. Engrish is always present, as usual.

[@JackdeDuCoeur]

Yeah, that was funny and gauges everything else portrayed.

[@sloppynyuszi]

The guy did a video on China and couldn’t pronounce Kunming. The K isn’t silent 😂

[@simp2234]

This free movie theme park

[@JK_Clark]

Migrant workers, numbering at 290.77 million, are not 'homeless' - not the way those 3 guys were depicted anyway.

[@youtubeuser8436]

What a waste of resources!😢

[@victornafwa2471]

In Kenya people have no houses but in china millions of houses are empty.The irony of life.😢

[@Reesee000]

Aren’t they in Kenya too, anyway???

[@vamoua4036]

It's always best to have confirmed buyers first before building.

[@CalmIng-ss3vt]

It's all bought but not occupied.

[@nolan412]

City living with the ambiance of the country.

[@moebill447]

This was a shock, I never thought China had problems this big.

[@fghrht54h67]

It doesn't, you are being manipulated.

[@sleepandrelaxation3395]

"Everything you see on youtube, movies and internet are true!" - Abraham Lincoln

[@leogeek]

You should say "This video was a shock", and try to find the truth outside of this video.

[@johnyossarian9059]

KZbin doesn't allow outside links, but just google "The myth of China’s ghost cities by Wade Shepard". It's a report by Reuters, the international news agency. This myth of China building ghost cities has been milked for all its worth for years by people like this video uploader to fool the gullible

[@visitante-pc5zc]

I 100% trust a black guy with cyborg eyes.

[@nadie4221]

I knew chinese weren't original but this is so sad, how about making traditional chinese houses that chinese would love

[@michah321]

That's why federal city planning will fail. If it's not driven by people, it won't easily be adopted. And the way they buy real estate, which in part they are doing here, is a way to ruin the opportunity for regular people to own a home.

[@MojoZ20]

they should just offer free units to the street residents of SF & LA

[@pollyseip]

I recognize that footage in the opening scenes from a the Proper People!! Would be nice if you gave them credit!!!

[@nguyyen6192]

The only reason why Pudong escaped the fate of a ghost city is its proximity to Shanghai. Otherwise trophy cities like most centrally planned projects, were built to satisfy some leader's ego and as a testament to their narcissism with little regards to the average man's needs.

[@TheNenniux]

All I heard was "can't afford to live there" and "investors/owners aren't reducing the prices"! So who do you want to live there again?

[@LonelyPandora]

This does fit the saying that "Rome wasn't built in a day". .

[@ahmedIbrahim-oo9bz]

Great location for movie sets

[@mbsnyderc]

The madness of central planing.

[@NormalChannel95]

You know, for a country that has over a billion people, hearing a ghost city in China just seems impossible but look where we're at.

[@kristoffer3000]

Well, this is shameless propaganda that has been proven to be false numerous times in the past, it always comes back around though, usually with the same old footage as well.

[@arcdecibel9986]

It obviously wasn't growth driving these cities, but centralized planning. Everything from the concept of the cities to the architecture was designed by the CCP, and THEN it "allowed" people to invest. If the investment had driven the growth, they wouldn't have this problem. The truth about these cities is that they're a REAL copy of the USSR's ghost towns and railroads to nowhere. The old CCCP Soviets figured that if they built particular industries and residences in areas that needed development, people, manufacturing, and retail would just go there for the "free" real-estate. But they didn't. The factories were too far from their suppliers, or the logistics were otherwise difficult. People wouldn't move because they liked their current area, or they wanted to be close to family, or they didn't want to leave their jobs, or one of a zillion other factors that no bureaucracy in the world, however competent, can or has ever anticipated across even a few thousand people. If the Soviet Union hadn't gone broke, offered more subsidy, and had allowed more foreign investment, they MIGHT have been able to populate a few of these cities, but even then results can be deceiving. Government spending is also part of GDP, and in China, investors and political class members are rewarded for increasing GDP, not Purchasing Power Parity or Real Wealth or any of that. Thus, you can spend 10 billion Yen and that shows up as an increase of 10 billion Yen, even if the final product costs you 40 billion Yen and you go bankrupt. In that vein, China is currently facing a demographic crisis, not a population boom, so who is going to move into these places as more housing becomes available in developed cities? They have the people to move in, and who would want to, but they live outside the Special Economic Zones where you're allowed to do things like "buy" property (It's actually renting from the government). They'll have to change that, and they are not likely to because three quarters of a billion people exposed to even limited capitalism would likely overthrow the government. Worse, most of those people are peasants, so it's not like they have many marketable skills, or even the ability to take care of an apartment building without a lot of training and education. It's quite the quandary for China as it ventures into economic trouble, but the problem all along was that they believed "If you build it, they will come." Not how the world works. Instead, it's "If people want to build it, and you allow them, they will."

[@christiano2444]

Ordos was a ghost city, but now it is thriving.

[@FalseNi9e]

This is mind-blowing!

[@Jung1981giggles]

If you build it they will come

[@sergioisthebest1]

Except In China

[@kristoffer3000]

@@sergioisthebest1 google these cities now, doofus

[@sergioisthebest1]

@@kristoffer3000 Google deez nuts loser haha

[@davidknightx]

When you'd rather leave entire cities empty than house your homeless population that built them, it's time to give up on humanity.

[@vexcarius7100]

Even Chinese businessmen tells people to start small. Not sure why they’re doing the opposite here. All cities naturally grow slowly.

[@samanthabichon503]

It looks to me like a perfect training ground for the Chinese Army, build a perfect replica of the major cities so that when your troops land there, they already know their way around and what areas to concentrate on......just a thought.

[@asanitationstompout8473]

🤣🤣🤣🤣😆🤣😆🤣😆🤣😆🤣😊🤣😆😆🤣😊😊🤣😊🤣😊😊

[@kristoffer3000]

You should think more, you're clearly not used to it 💀

[@playa1218]

Credit @TheProperPeople who captured a lot of the footage here and have fully explored the big city. You can see them on the roof here 0:33

[@cooneywi]

In U.S. right now we have housing shortage and homeless people. Is this the same in China? Or are there too many housing units and not enough people?

[@BabvBlues]

Australia is going thru a rental crisis and ppl would do anything to have a place to live!!

[@johnsomn2148]

When Henry Ford justified the low cost of his auto- " if your employees cannot afford you products, how do you expect the public" . He felt the best advertisement for Ford cars were the employees that worked manufacturing them.😊

[@randyrobertson4686]

It seems bizarre however , that typically a country’s city will get larger and grow in dwellings and apartment complexes and business centers as a demand due to growth from an increase in interest in industry and places of employment of all kinds. People will congregate closer to these areas and some will choose to live in city limits or in a more rural environment close by. But it’s very curious that China is , in all intents and purposes trying to force this natural expansion of growth in reverse. Build a ENORMOUS CITY and they will come. Well……not so much.

[@bpeng2000]

You based your comment on a "stable" society at the end of urbanization, but China had a constant large flow of people moving to big cities who will gradually fill the ghost towns. Even if some "ghost cities" will remain for various reasons, the situation will be way better than having these people staying in slums as the cases in India and other nations.

[@Ace-mw9pm]

@@bpeng2000they will have to make the places dirt cheap because 70% of China lives on $2 a day.

[@derekstarkjr5128]

More money than brains?

[@90stroll86]

false they are superior in technology

[@Wucc2caz]

This video was great, but it focused on ghost CITIES. The craziest thing is the number of ghost TOWNS in China. Small towns utterly abandoned by industrialization and movement to the cities. It was wild to drive down the highway passed numerous hallowed out abandoned buildings on your route between major cities.

[@cybergothika6906]

This is like when a noob builds a city in Simcity or Skyline, but forgets to check the income before building more buildings that there are people to live in.

[@user-or6yn8pm3c]

Still looks nicer than Chicago and Los Angeles.

[@asanitationstompout8473]

Naaaaaaaaaah

[@onerider808]

Nope

[@sbrgm]

I'm always curious to see videos with a title like "the truth about China" - and almost every time, like this time, I realize again that the video maker are clueless click baiters and deceivers.

[@bunyavissuthisorn5909]

But, the second the third thefourth of Covid-19 pandemic that caused many cities to be shutdown is real. ... Evergrande collapse is real. That Million of Chinese are broke and terminated mortgage payment is real. ... Urging China to get stuck with Putin and paying more military expense in Ukraine by US is real. ............

[@johnyossarian9059]

Dola dola bill, yo!

[@Trgn]

Remeber that Evergreen story when all the news be like China economy will collapse in 2 weeks. Bloody hilarious. Also some western analysts been saying the same shit for over decades now. Most of these lazy channels are just recycling mainstream propaganda for quick views and be like yo this is "China's insight" while offering worthless zero knowledges about China, its culture, politics nor economy

[@joeyj6526]

Some of these images look like the back rooms.

[@gregmartinez6420]

It looks like they have built this to put people from the original cities that they live in wow

[@toroddlnning6806]

maybe they are just storing resources. they can blow it up later and reuse the concrete?

[@srbclangaming]

the result when you mix and mash communism and capitalism

[@eddieboy4667]

They can’t innovate, only try to copy. Sad.

[@bunyavissuthisorn5909]

... And simultaneously try to bluff number1, America.

[@kristoffer3000]

They're the nr1 innovators in the world, dunce

[@Harald111th]

China is in most cases more qualified than the US.

[@tinygrim]

Makes sense. Like sitting on gold bars for as long as it takes. Smart actually. The building ones .

[@truththe1689]

The high buildings are prisons, not apartments

[@filippocorti6760]

Is it safe to live in one of these cities where there are some people but not nearly enough to fill the city?

[@h5mind373]

Curiously, the video states China has a homeless population of 300 million, whereas other "official" sources say 3 million or less. I guess if you don't admit you have a problem, it's the same as not having it?

[@berbs9691]

i've lived in india, china, and the US - china had by far the least homeless people out of the 3.

[@sawittwo]

Surprisingly, China is at number 4. With India at number 6, out the top 10 Countries with the highest population of homelessness. The biggest surprise comes from the US at number 10.

[@谢枫-t3k]

因为数据是假的，所以这个视频点击率不高，基本都属于尴尬的黑。

[@Reesee000]

Lollllllllll

[@arandomzoomer4837]

300 million is most of the population of the us, I think they used the wrong number

[@gozaddy]

The rate at which infrastructure springs up from all corners of China is amazing. That is exactly why there are ghost cities. Countries with poor infrastructure do not have ghost cities.

[@swenja761110]

The video is completely false. One high school in the so-called "ghost city" Ordos is actually listed as one of the top 50 high schools from ALL of China high schools that have the most number of students admitted into the top two universities of China in 2023. That particular high school is merely 2 street blocks away from the giant horse statue shown in the video. So, obviously, not only is Ordos not a ghost city, it is a thriving city with some very elite school. Also note the list is based on the number of students admitted, NOT percentage, so the school has to be both elite and big, i.e., LOTS of students. Think about attending a US high school that ranks top 50. Not to mention the Pudong story. Seriously, this is pretty much the main entry port into China.

[@Craigsinglee]

It’s not false most are true

[@kristoffer3000]

@@Craigsinglee Why bother lying? Just google it, it's fake as f

[@uss-usaf-atlantis]

That's a nature catastrophe think how many energy are you need to build this for not enough people .

[@EdThomas-l9r]

If we're not careful, this could be happening here

[@CM7777...]

Where is here?

[@rbrown2804Brown]

Wait a minute ! There is homeless people sleeping on the streets while this huge abandon city has space to shelter them ? ? ! ! That's insane...

[@anneloving8405]

Yeah take a guess where all the raw materials came from to build them.

[@sonicguyver7445]

I heard about that idea of property investment in China. It sounded like something about to collapes. From what I heard people buy and sell these unoccupied homes to each other as an investment. It just keeps circling and circling. The notion of not furnishing them plays to this as well. But it sounds like a Jenga tower, one wrong pull or push and the whole thing (the investment economy) collapses.