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  • Where is everyone?

  • What happened here?!

  • Whoooaa!!

  • Hi, welcome to China Uncensored.

  • I'm your host Chris Chappell.

  • Behold, the streets of China:

  • empty!

  • Huge, sprawling megacities

  • populated only by the promise of what might have been.

  • You're looking at China's meteoric GDP growth.

  • You see, when there's construction, GDP goes up.

  • But what those GDP figures don't factor in

  • is whether or not anyone actually ends up living in those cities.

  • You know the saying, "If you build it they will come?"

  • Well, in China, they didn't come.

  • These are China's ghost cities.

  • This isliang.

  • Its 160 million dollar airport gets no more than five flights a day.

  • Most of the apartments meant for the 300,000 planned residents sit empty,

  • built on land that used to be irrigation ditches for the farmers.

  • The farmers are still around,

  • but the water isn't.

  • Then there's the city of Ordos in Inner Mongolia.

  • A million people were supposed to live here.

  • But only one in every fifty buildings is filled.

  • But surely there can't be that many of these ghost cities in China right?!

  • Well, Baidu,

  • basically the Chinese version of Google,

  • set out to find the answer.

  • They analyzed location data from their 700 million users.

  • And found more than 50 ghost cities across China.

  • 50!

  • So why is this such a common phenomenon?

  • Part of it has to do with the government's massive push for urbanization.

  • According to the "National New-type Urbanization Plan”—

  • yes that's what it's called

  • by 2020, 60 percent of the Chinese population will be living in cities.

  • That's more than 800 million people.

  • So it's not exactly an issue of

  • too much supply and too little demand nationwide.

  • It's all about location.

  • Real estate prices are already so high in the top-tier cities

  • that the average worker will never be able to own a home in their lifetime.

  • That's why so many people live in urban areas just outside the major cities

  • for example, in recently urbanized places like this one near Beijing.

  • It offers lousy hospitals,

  • over-crowded schools,

  • no bus terminals,

  • no movie theaters,

  • only two tiny parks,

  • and 700,000 neighbors.

  • But living here with a three-hour commute to central Beijing

  • is still more appealing than living in a beautifully designed city

  • in Shanxi Province that has no jobs.

  • Rememberliang?

  • In 2010, its GDP growth was a staggering 21 percent.

  • Last year, it was negative 2 percent.

  • That's because it was coal mining town

  • and coal used to be big business in China.

  • But with the economic slowdown,

  • a lot of steel makers reduced production.

  • They stopped buying so much coal,

  • and coal mines went out of business.

  • Then there's corruption.

  • Officials in China get promotions based on GDP growth.

  • Soliang officials had been boosting GDP

  • by building way more infrastructure than was actually needed.

  • Business also used to be booming inliang's Liquor City area,

  • where they made baijiu,

  • a strong Chinese liquor that was very popular with officials.

  • But then baijiu became a target in Xi Jinping's "anti-corruption campaign"—

  • and now business is on the rocks.

  • And you know what else became a target in the "anti-corruption campaign"?

  • The mayor.

  • And a bunch of other government officials, who also got sacked.

  • Anyway, the city government soon ran out of money.

  • And that's just one city.

  • According to Wade Shepard, author of "Ghost Cities,"

  • there are 20 to 40 million empty apartments in China.

  • Now you'd think the central government would learn its lesson,

  • and put an end to all this excess building.

  • But it's not so simple.

  • Because local officials have their own plans and incentives.

  • According to Xinhua,

  • the governments of various cities across the country

  • have development plans that, when put together,

  • would provide housing for 3.4 billion people.

  • That's more than double China's actual population.

  • So unless China plans to switch to a mandatory Seven-Child Policy soon,

  • they're in big trouble.

  • So what do you think?

  • If you were a ghost, which Chinese ghost city would you live in?

  • Leave your comments below,

  • and subscribe and like China Uncensored on Facebook.

  • Once again I'm Chris Chappell. See you next time.

  • Xi Jinping

  • Zhou Yongkang

  • Mao. Mao. Mao.

  • Barack Obama

  • Obama

  • I love Chris

  • OFC?!

  • Wow, some crazy things happened in 2015.

  • Let's just say I don't think Xi Jinping will "let old acquaintance be forgot."

Where is everyone?

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