The largest ghost town in the world
China is full of cities, malls and ghost airports, gigantic infrastructure projects that have been vacant for years. The Chinese authorities announce that these facilities are being built "for growth" and sooner or later they will be filled with people, clerks, passengers or tenants. At the same time, the government artificially “accelerates” the economy — such projects (this also includes roads that few people drive on, warehouses filled to capacity with copper or aluminum) add 1-1.5 percentage points to the annual GDP growth rate.
1. The city of Ordos in the province of Inner Mongolia began to be built in 2003. Despite the fact that in this province the Mongols make up only about 17%, it was decided to build the city in the Mongolian style (hence its name, associated with the word "horde").
2. As a result, by 2010, a city designed for 1 million people was built on an area of 355 square kilometers (by the way, the population density in it is 4 times less than in Moscow - this is by the way that even overpopulated China can afford to build spacious cities, but this is a topic for a separate article). However, by the end of 2013, Ordos was only 2% populated - 20,000 people live in it.
3. The main investor-developer in 2008-09 set housing prices here at 10-11 thousand dollars per square meter. m, today they have fallen almost 2-3 times - up to 4-4.5 thousand dollars. However, these prices are unbearable for the vast majority of residents of the province of Inner Mongolia, where the average salary is 400-500 dollars.
4. Part of the empty areas in Ordos intends to buy the Chinese government for retired military, but there will be no more than 20-25 thousand people (i.e. another 2-2.5% of the city's population to the current 2%).
5. All these years after the commissioning of facilities, management companies are forced to incur losses while maintaining the infrastructure of an empty city - repairs, street cleaning, security, street lighting, landscaping, etc. - and this is up to 10-12 million dollars a month. This money was allocated to the developer by Chinese state-owned banks in the form of a loan at a low interest rate.
6. The Ordos project itself was launched in the Kangbashi region after huge reserves of coal and other minerals were discovered here. The area was instantly built up with office skyscrapers, civic centers, government buildings, museums, theaters, and sports facilities.
7. Many sleeping areas were also built with beautiful cozy mansions for middle class people. The only problem is that this area was meant to be inhabited by 1 million inhabitants, and now almost no one lives there.
8. With the rate of settlement as it is now, the Ordos will be fully populated in 40-50 years.
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Keywords: Abandoned city | China