I saw a video on Reddit showing the demolition of dozens of vacant high rise buildings in China. In addition to what you might expect, the comments alleged a “Ponzi scheme” in the housing market, and that some were still paying mortgages on the destroyed buildings. Any idea what’s happening on that front?

  • @Neers94@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    Again, like I said in another post like this one. It’s hilarious and sad how quick redditors are to jump to conclusions about something they know incredibly little about. And of course, when people bring up slumlord companies in the US buying up land and housing and displacing low income people, they always accuse us of jumping to conclusions and how we have to be “nuanced”. These people are completely dishonest, it is useless to engage with them.

    • @NikkiB@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      102 years ago

      Yeah, redditors are racist and delusional, which is why I asked here. I was wondering if you thought the video was faked or if this doesn’t happen as often as propaganda implies. Or is it really a problem China faces? If so, how did they get here?

      • @OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.ml
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        32 years ago

        Without knowing anything about the video, there’s countless examples where “Chinesr ghost cities” have become actual populated urban centers. China is thinking long-term.

        I remember the first time I learned about this was from a Vice documentary that a friend showed me. In the documentary they visited a “ghost city” and showed large skyrises that were occupied by less than 10 people (the whole city had barely 1000 people in it), unopened metro stations in the middle of nowhere and huge but empty schools, hospitals and department stores. They then made some comments about corrupt politicians giving our huge contracts to construction companies for bribes and for an artificial way to make it seem the economy was growing. A few years later I looked up that place, and it was already a city with a population of 150 000 people.

        Most likely the video is real, but taken way out of context or painted in a particular way to fit the narrative of “ghost cities”.

      • Amicese
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        1 year ago

        deleted by creator

      • @Neers94@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        I couldn’t tell you, there’s no context given. If you have me a video of an apartment building being demolished in NYC without any context, I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything either. All you can do is speculate, and some others in here have some to offer. Maybe it’s faulty construction, maybe it’s unsafe, I don’t know. No, I wouldn’t say it happens as often as propaganda implies, because first of all, you don’t really know what is actually happening here, and second of all, it’s one video, there isn’t any implication that it’s happening everywhere. You could make a compilation of buildings being torn down in the US and come up with the same effect. The simple answer is, I don’t know, can’t really make any conclusions about it. If there were more information as to why it was taken down, where it was taken down, and what exactly was taken down, it’d be easier.

  • Makan ☭ CPUSA
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    292 years ago

    You saw the demolition of high-rise buildings.

    Where did they take place? Are you sure it is China? For what reason? This was one incident? If so, if you lack the context, then don’t bother paying attention to it.

  • @CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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    202 years ago

    When China builds “ghost towns” they’re accused of ponzi scheming their GDP and when they destroy them they’re accused of ponzi scheming their GDP too!

    Can’t fucking win with libs, they haven’t evolved past the “crafty Chinese” stereotype.

    I have to point out something funny though (haven’t seen the video):

    demolition of dozens of vacant high rise buildings in China

    Would you prefer the buildings be full when they demolished them? x)

    Really it could be a whole lot of reasons, off the top of my head I can find 10 reasons right now they would demolish those buildings before anyone had a chance to live in them.

    • @NikkiB@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      22 years ago

      Sure lol, but it sounds like a massive fuck up if they really are destroying whole cities they’ve built with no one ever living inside of them. What’s going on here? What’s the story behind all of this?

    • @NikkiB@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      42 years ago

      Absolutely, but I think you’re missing the point of my question. Is there any kind of large-scale demolition happening in China? Are these ghost cities real? If so, what happened that got us to this point?

    • CritiGalDesist∞
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      52 years ago

      Tldr:

      How China’s ghost cities came to be? Historically, there’s always been a natural reason for building a city in a particular location, whether it’s proximity to a water source, fertile land, mineral deposits, or simple geography. Over time, that city would expand almost organically, increasing in size to accommodate its growing population. However, China decided to do things a little bit differently and just build the cities in these locations even if there was no logical reason for them to be there. They were guided by the idea that once the cities were built, people would come on their own. “Cities and districts built without demand or necessity resulted in what some Chinese scholars have termed, literally, ‘walls without markets’,” says William Hurst, a political science professor at Northwestern University. “Or what we might translate as uncompleted or hollow cities. Political exigency and investment hysteria trumped economic calculus or consideration of genuine human needs.” This created a real catch-22. The people didn’t want to move to areas that lacked basic public services like healthcare, schools, transportation, and shopping centres, while the local governments were reluctant to build the necessary infrastructure until there were enough people already living there to justify the costs. But things are slowly starting to change.

      Are they really as empty as they seem? In 2015, the Chicago-based photographer Kai Caemmerer decided to see for himself what all the fuss was about and pay some of these cities a visit. What he encountered there was not at all what he expected. “I was originally inspired by some of the (almost sensationalist) reports and articles that I had read about the new ‘ghost cities of China,” says Caemmerer. “Digging a little bit deeper, it became fairly clear that many of these ‘ghost cities’ were not at all abandoned or defunct, as they had been depicted, but rather just very new.” Caemmerer spent about three months exploring three of the so-called ghost cities: the Kangbashi District of Ordos, the Yujiapu Financial District in the Binhai New Area near Tainjin, and the Meixi Lake City near Changsha. Kangbashi, for example, has around 100,000 inhabitants today. Although it was originally designed to hold 500,000 and does feel rather empty at times, you can hardly call a city with 100,000 people living in it a ghost city!

      The population of the so-called ghost cities is starting to increase Established in 1993 and located east of the Huangpu River, Pudong is probably the most successful example of a former ghost city. Once the laughing stock of the entire country when it was filled with empty skyscrapers, the Pudong financial district is now a vibrant financial centre and home to some of the largest and most distinguished financial institutions and companies in the world, boasting 99 per cent occupancy rates. It’s also the most populous district in Shanghai, with more than 5 million inhabitants. Other so-called ghost cities have experienced a similar change of fortune. According to a report published by Standard Chartered, the occupancy rate of Zhengdong New District has doubled from 2012 to 2014, while the population of Zhenjiang’s Dantu quadrupled over the same period. Changzhou’s Wujin district has also seen its occupancy rate increase from 20 to 50 per cent.

      While most of these so-called ghost cities have failed to live up to their original promise, very few of them have actually failed completely and are hardly deserving of the nickname that’s been assigned to them. They may have to go back to the drawing board and set some more realistic goals. Most of them should become fully functioning cities eventually. All they need is a little more time.

  • @jay91
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    62 years ago

    I saw something like this, but the question is why not giving them to people who paid for these houses already instead of destroying them? some of them are not completed yet, but still better than nothing.

      • @jay91
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        52 years ago

        If the buildings were faulty, then handing them over to unassuming inhabitants is plain murder.

        In this case, i completely agree with you, this makes sense.

        What i meant is maybe the contractor is unable to complete the project for financial reasons. i saw such a case in middle east, the contractor went bankrupt, the government decided to take the project and give it to the people who paid for the apartments, and supported them with long term loans to complete these apartments.

    • Oatsteak
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      132 years ago

      Maybe they were falling apart. There’s no context so who knows? I mean other than all the China experts on reddit, obviously.