[clicks]

The casual dismissal of their sincerity is annoying ("don't know if they're telling the truth, or just saying government-friendly things because the governmental people are here right now!"). At least do the due research if such claims are going to be made by trying to get interviews from these folks without governmental people's presence, or just don't doubt their sincerity. But please don't just sprinkle in the there's-no-freedom-in-China FUD willy-nilly that we've all heard enough of already. This is like how when the hacker faction of PLA is talked about there's an ominous music in the background and serious faces of reporters looking at you to set the tone of the piece as if China is this mysterious and strange entity that is going to bring us down, all the while America's Olymic Games programs hardly even ever get a mention.

Anyway, I think we might be looking too hard for large problems where there might not be any. Don't forget that we have a similarly ridiculous situation in America: for every homeless person there are 26 houses that are vacant. Considering that China's population is a 1.35 billion (about a billion more than America's), at least in one respect it would seem like a prudent choice to build high-rises in place of crudely-made one or two-storey building houses in anticipation of future housing issues.

[r0h1n]

To add further, doesn't America have its own share of "ghost cities" that were once booming but are now decrepit?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Uni...

I'd be more interested in why two such different countries as the US and China seem to have independently arrived at the same problem of ghost cities. We know that China's problems arise from a top-down, state-directed model of development under a one-party rule. But that was never the case in the US, right?

Conversely, there are very few instances of such ghost cities in India (at least that I know of). Possibly because India's urban development has up till now (though today many new cities are currently being proposed as urbanization becomes the need of the hour in India) been much more organic and bottom-up, largely because we couldn't afford otherwise.

[justinschuh]

Is my sarcasm filter off here? The ghost towns in the US are dramatically smaller, were pretty much all the result of organic growth, and were actually populated at some point. They're ghost towns now because the populations moved away for any number of reasons (the end of a boom, economic shift, major catastrophe, eminent domain).

The situation in China is completely different. Regional governments are naively trying to stimulate their economies with these huge construction projects. So, they're building giant cities without proper planning or consideration for population shifts. These cities have never been occupied and it looks like they never will. Worse, they're being paid for by highly rated bonds issued from the central government. The whole thing looks like a real estate bubble that could tank the Chinese economy.

[hrkristian]

I don't know if you're baiting for a conspiracy, but I'd go as far as to say top level politics are to blame in both countries, albeit more directly in the case of China.

[rquirk]

Interesting reading! A lot of the ghost towns in the US are pretty small, maybe 100-200 inhabitants maximum. They eventually seem to fold into nearby communities with better road/rail connections.

FWIW there are ghost towns like the US examples in Spain too - villages of about 50-100 inhabitants that eventually just seem to dry up as populations give up on agriculture/subsistence/mining or whatever and younger generations move to larger cities.

Then there's Valdeluz. Political corruption at its finest, producing a semi-ghost town with less than 2000 people living there. http://desertedplaces.blogspot.com.es/2013/06/the-spanish-gh... - I visited there a couple of summers ago. Nice and peaceful, plenty of playgrounds for the kids to play on, no queues at the supermarket :-)

[eru]

Also India is much more densely populated.