Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
At least they’re putting money into building housing within their borders. As opposed to saving it for developing territories outside of their present boundaries. Or else someone expects China to shortly be the most habitable place in the world…
Domestic forced relocation.
Perhaps as “Potemkin Villages.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
It’s not that surprising, it’s a function of government control of development, and on the scale of government in China there is also waste on a scale that is hard for us to fathom.
For all of China’s apparent strengths, they face massive problems in the near future as the economy slows and the inefficiency of the system is exposed.
Their stock market has been discounting this for a while.
Cities of dreams.
“If you build it, (t)he(y) will come.”
Not.
Gummint Stimulus at its finest. Quite Keynesian.
From what I can determine SJBill has the right of it. They’ve been building these things for awhile. Apparently just to keep some people busy. The amount of malinvestment is staggering.
Several investment advisers have been saying for awhile that China is a bubble economy. based on these ghost cities, they may well be right.
Reminiscent a bit of when Brazil decided to move their capital to a city that didn’t exist, Brasilia. In the middle of nowhere, in the jungle and without roads, they built a new capital in only 41 months in the late ’50s. I remember pictures of empty but new and beautiful buildings in Life magazine, all mostly empty. It was thought folly at the time.
Today it is a thriving city of nearly 3 million people. Unfortunately, although supposedly well planned and designed, and although a beautiful city, their planning did not turn out so well.
flit/
The problem with Brasilia was that it wasn’t built on a human scale, but on an architectural idea/Fascist grandoise scale that at first did not even provide housing for the minor bureaucrats or allow areas for the development of small business, stores, etc so necessary for the functioning of daily life. In a way Canberra in OZ is much the same. Come the weekend everyone heads for Sydney or Melbourne on cheap ANA flights. The Seagram’s bldg in NYC (designed around the same era as Brasilia, iirc, a reflection of the same architectural trend)is yet another prime example of design for “show” w.o. people in mind. Walk by it and note that the massive floor-to-ceiling bare windows exposing the occupants to the outside are filled with curtains, (bed-sheets even) and drapes of all sizes and colors by the occupants (or used to be) attempting to achieve a sense of privacy…in contradistinction to the desire of the architect who wanted to present a smooth, unified, seamless “look” to the exterior facade.
And the PRC is INDEED the worlds greatest RE bubble. Occupied workers don’t have time to riot. But, like everything else, as they say, “all trees don’t grow all the way to the sky.”
Baaadd times are ahead when their bubble collapses–as it inevitably will..
Really Flit? You think there’s an equivalence between building one new city for a specific purpose and building 400 cities just to build something?
No wonder your a Keynesian. Your analogizer is out of cal. The economy is not a pump, and Brasilia is not Chenggong.
JG – I said it was “reminiscent” not “equivalent.”
Reminiscent: Tending to remind one of something
Equivalent: Equal in value, amount, function, meaning
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Bonus: Reading comprehension is defined as the level of understanding of writing.
So maybe work on that a bit before you post, eh?
Context matters. There are two reasons for your comment. The first is that there was something in the post that triggered your reminiscing, a link where at some level the two scenarios were identical or equivalent. The second is that you were having an Abe Simpson moment. In that case may I ask that you restrict your reminiscences to the use of onions as fashion accessories? It would help with the noise filtration.
600M people living with a household–*household*–income under $3/day.
440M more between $1K-$2K/year.
Their internal market for goods is almost nonexistent.
To view China as monolithic is to misoverestimate (!) their capabilities. There are some very wealthy people in its east, but by and large it’s a country of people living in conditions not much better than those of Sub-Saharan Africa.
The elite will have their hands full holding that country together over the next century.
What I think is interesting is try looking up “ghost cities” or “ghost towns” on Wikipedia. No mention of China. And then, if you Wiki the city names like “Ordos” there is no mention of them being “ghost cities” and you get the impression that the cities are thriving metropolis.
Several weeks ago, a website I have gone to on and off had a number of aerial photos of some of those “ghost cities.” It was eerie seeing photos taken during the middle of the day, with 4 and 6 lane roads, with not one car on them, or any cars in parking lots. Some of the construction has been in existing cities, so can’t really be called ghost towns.
Most likely what we are seeing is the result of crony capitalism. The Government has the money and is trying stimulate a falling economy. It won’t work any better for them than it has for the Obummer. Keynsian economics is a fantasy that even Keynes abandoned.
I do wonder how many of those “ghost cities” are really unoccupied. Much of the assumption is based on lack of cars. I know Potemkin village is real, and I’m sure some of the locations were “build it and they will come” socialism. However, you can look at pictures of Pyongyang and have a hard time finding a car. You know it’s populated and full of roads, but few are allowed cars.
Also, it’s one thing to build something for show and not use. But some of these locations would have required workers to exist in the location for sometime with heavy machinery. China could be using slave labor, but I anything else would require some local businesses to provide lodging, food, clothing, and entertainment for those workcrews. It’s not impossible to imagine that China moves all that along from place to place, but considering they understand capitalism in international trade; I find it hard to believe they are that foolish internally. If they are that foolish, then these pictures paint the best application of Keynesian infrastructure economics.
Their internal market for goods is enormous. The number of households with enough disposable income to own credit cards is as large as the US population. All those households want better appliances, cars, better everything.
The main reason to invest in China today is different than it was a decade ago. Nobody in their right mind would invest in China today to export. Plenty of people are investing to have a chance to address that internal market, however. As just one example, witness GE selling out their avionics jewels to a Chinese Joint Venture company.
I do expect it to be a rocky transition from export-driven economy.
This is Bush’s fault.
Interesting video on China’s “Ghost Cities,” trying to analyze and make some sense of them.
Inscrutable, as always, these Chinese.
But I suppose having a ghost city waiting for new occupants is preferable to having a former boomtown become an empty ghost town. Especially if the investment is already recouped (which is hard to believe) for them. Time will tell, but like they say in the vid, it may take 10 years to know.
But it’s difficult to understand what sort of logic is driving this behavior.
The same logic that drives all human behavior: “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
The Soviet Union used to had broad avenues with almost no vehicle traffic on them. The traffic that was there was government vehicles.
I’m thinking “company town,” with the Company being the Chinese Government. Nobody, not even the Chinese, build houses and office buildings in the middle of nowhere just for the fun in it. My bet is there was A Plan to have something there, a mine or a smelting plant or a factory, and so dutifully they built the workers quarters and shops and hospitals necessary only to find out the mine or factory was useless. Goodbye plan, goodbye workers, and the city remains unused.
– Max
Most of those pictures show distinct residential areas, which means there would be traffic of some sort to get the people from where they live to where they work. Little to no traffic implies little to no population.
Everything is done for a reason. Not all reasons are good ones. Look to the US. The Obama administration has been using everything in its power to keep politically favored industries going, if he could figure out a way to do so he would be ordering news houses to be built. Now realize that when it comes to economic policy and corruption the Chinese leadership makes Obama look like George Washington.
Speaking of which, we have some new picked winners here! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-01/u-s-closes-4-75-billion-in-solar-loans-before-program-deadline.html
How much of this $.75 billion dollars will ever be paid back to the taxpayer? And assuming solar becomes 100% viable (which is farcical) how do we store the excess energy when it rains, or at night? For each dollar spent for generation, there should be an equivalent amount being spent for electrical storage. Imaging 100 acre battery farms next to the 200 acre solar farms, all with the efficiency to power a few city blocks. But forget about using that oil up in North Dakota.
Solacy as opposed to Lunacy.
The worst part is loan guarantees are probably the worst form of subsidy. Their only value is the rather small savings you get from a lowered interest rate. Unless you default. They do seem to be a pretty effective way to “spread the wealth around”.
Wow…that is just freakish….