# China's Ghost Cities



## Jay

China's Ghost Cities











The largest uninhabited cities are in China, these are not cities that have been abandoned but cities that have never been occupied in the first place because people cannot affort to live in them, I am fascinated by these places even if they are an ominous warning sign to the Chinese economy. 


Here is a video about them, there are empty cities built for millions of people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pngdQo205fM

Pics:














































http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/ordos-chinas-modern-ghost-town.html

Pretty crazy


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## Jay

empty high rises


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## calaguyo

So China do not practice BTO (Build to Order)?


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## LADEN

They will be occupied in the future viva China.


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## skyridgeline

calaguyo said:


> So China do not practice BTO (Build to Order)?


They are built to speculation


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## Jay

LADEN said:


> They will be occupied in the future viva China.


by who? people who can't afford them or people who can't afford them?


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## skyridgeline

Jay said:


> by who? people who can't afford them or people who can't afford them?


By speculators :lol:


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## calaguyo

In Metro Manila, all establishments are build-to-order and that's the advantage for our capitalists but sometimes (or most of the time?) problems for consumer. Complains are mostly related to delay of construction due to the fact that not 100% of the units are yet to be solved/reserved.


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## SydneyCity

Incredible, looks straight out of an apocalypse movie.


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## NotTarts

Here's a better quality version of the video:
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/watch/id/601007/n/China-s-Ghost-Cities


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## Kenwen

Lol, only stupid people would believe China is not BTO in terms of property market. The real estate growth in China is just much larger than any other country in terms of scale. These properties are mostly sold out, to the investors. Ordinary people are trying hard to buy them, but it took them maybe 20 years to pay off the mortgage, and the prices drops slowly since the government implemented policies. 
And China will not fall, if China galls, USA and EU and the rest of the world will fall too, these countries will help China, if China are really in that kind of trouble.


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## Jay

Kenwen said:


> Lol, only stupid people would believe China is not BTO in terms of property market. The real estate growth in China is just much larger than any other country in terms of scale. These properties are mostly sold out, to the investors. Ordinary people are trying hard to buy them, but it took them maybe 20 years to pay off the mortgage, and the prices drops slowly since the government implemented policies.
> And China will not fall, if China galls, USA and EU and the rest of the world will fall too, these countries will help China, if China are really in that kind of trouble.



Did you even watch the video? Look, I love China as a country, I'm fascinated by it, but building houses that people cannot affort and tearing down the ones they can is just plain not smart. I'm glad the country is building supertalls and experiencing economic flourish, but you have to be realistic as to the kind of consequences that can have in the future, people need money to live in those places and the vast majority of Chinese don't have it yet, and won't for a while, if ever. 

China is on the rise, but like all other countries on the rise, it will not last forever and the growth rate will slow down, and when it does, and you have 64 million empty apartments and (some) unoccupied supertalls there is going to be economic turmoil. 

I just fear, for China's sake, that the same thing will happen there, as in Dubai, or maybe much worse.


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## yankeesfan1000

^^

You are living on a different planet, read this article from the NYTimes, I just posted some snippets but read the full thing. This is the definition of a bubble. 

Edit: That was meant for Kenwen not you Jay. China can not physically support this amount of growth. It's very little actual economic growth, and all government funded.

"... In the last few years, cities’ efforts have helped government infrastructure and real estate spending surpass foreign trade as the biggest contributor to China’s growth.

...spending on so-called fixed-asset investment — a crucial measure of building that is heavily weighted toward government and real estate projects — is now equal to nearly 70 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. It is a ratio that no other large nation has approached in modern times.

Even Japan, at the peak of its building boom in the 1980s, reached only about 35 percent, and the figure has hovered around 20 percent for decades in the United States..."










*Building Boom in China Stirs Fears of Debt Overload*

By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: July 6, 2011

"...But there are growing signs that China’s long-running economic boom could be undermined by these building binges, which are financed through heavy borrowing by local governments and clever accounting that masks the true size of the debt.

The danger, experts say, is that China’s municipal governments could already be sitting on huge mountains of hidden debt — a lurking liability that threatens to stunt the nation’s economic growth for years or even decades to come. Just last week China’s national auditor, who reports to the cabinet, warned of the perils of local government borrowing. And on Tuesday the Beijing office of Moody’s Investors Service issued a report saying the national auditor might have understated Chinese banks’ actual risks from loans to local governments...

...In the case of Wuhan, a close look at its finances reveals that the city has borrowed tens of billions of dollars from state-run banks. But the loans seldom go directly to the local government. Instead, the borrowing is done by special investment corporations set up by the city — business entities whose debt shows up nowhere on Wuhan’s official financial balance sheet.

Adding to the risk, the collateral for many loans is local land valued at lofty prices that could collapse if China’s real estate bubble burst. Wuhan’s land prices have tripled in the last decade...

... A recent report by the investment bank UBS predicted that local government investment corporations could generate up to $460 billion in loan defaults over the next few years. As a percentage of China’s G.D.P., that would be far bigger than the $700 billion troubled-asset bailout program in the United States.

... This year, relying largely on bank loans, Wuhan plans to spend about $22 billion on infrastructure projects, an amount five times as large as the city’s tax revenue last year. And aspirations notwithstanding, Wuhan is still relatively poor. Residents here earn about $3,000 a year...

...In a report this year, the investment bank Credit Suisse identified Wuhan as one of China’s “top 10 cities to avoid,” saying its housing stock was so huge that it would take eight years to sell the residences already completed — never mind the hundreds of thousands now under construction."


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## Baleares

That is what i'm talking about.


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## BringMe

scary


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## Skyrazer

Kenwen said:


> Lol, only stupid people would believe China is not BTO in terms of property market. The real estate growth in China is just much larger than any other country in terms of scale. These properties are mostly sold out, to the investors. Ordinary people are trying hard to buy them, but it took them maybe 20 years to pay off the mortgage, and the prices drops slowly since the government implemented policies.
> And China will not fall, if China galls, USA and EU and the rest of the world will fall too, these countries will help China, if China are really in that kind of trouble.


Only stupid people would believe an economic model built around binging on fixed-asset investments is a sustainable model to run a large complex economy on in the long run. If you truly believe China can continue to do what they are doing to infinity and beyond, you are delusional, end of story.

And if China galls? Yeah it'll be felt around the world, but the universe as we know it won't end. If we can live through the 2008 meltdown (which I remind you is when the US, a much larger and more influential economy than China's, croaked), we can live through China having a bit of a stumble and fall.


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## Jay

Yea it's mindboggling how people can think that empty cities and 100+ supertalls _won't_ have dire future consequences, even in a wealthy country, let a lone a developing one.


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## Suburbanist

There is a difference between buildings being owned by someone other than the developer and being inhabited. I think there is a massive glut of overpriced properties that, for now, a are changing hands from investor to investor, but no one can either sell them at a profit to dwellers or rent them at justifiable rates.

Of course they could slash price to get people living there, but that would trigger massive price drops of all units in the same area, and the master developers, usually state-backed, surely want to avoid that.


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## calaguyo

When I was in Huzhou, I also saw a lot of highrises under construction but surprisingly these developments are too far from the city center, too far from jobs. Even though these are 100% sold, I believe some of them were just bought for investment purpose thinking that they could sell them in an appreciated price overtime. But prices going down.


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## conc.man

Curse is not a good way, if you are so sure China's "very little actual economic growth" all government funded and will crash soon, just actively short related assets, you could make a fortune in years.

Well, I am doing the opposite, trying hard to buy an apartment in Beijing recently, I think it's a low risk investment, but seems impossible now, authorities has heavily restricted house buying since last year, they just simply say you cant buy it, really annoying.


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## skyridgeline

_China's Ministry of Finance said on Thursday it had given 66 billion yuan ($10.5 billion) to local governments to help build public housing for rent, one of five categories of state-subsidized affordable housing._

_It follows earlier announcements by the ministry that 21.2 billion yuan had been given to rebuild shanty towns and another 10.5 billion yuan had been given for construction of low-rent homes, the bottom tier of social housing._

- BEIJING | Thu May 24, 2012 12:45am EDT, reuters.com
(Reporting by Langi Chiang and Nick Edwards; Editing by Eric Meijer)


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## Kenwen

Skyrazer said:


> Only stupid people would believe an economic model built around binging on fixed-asset investments is a sustainable model to run a large complex economy on in the long run. If you truly believe China can continue to do what they are doing to infinity and beyond, you are delusional, end of story.
> 
> And if China galls? Yeah it'll be felt around the world, but the universe as we know it won't end. If we can live through the 2008 meltdown (which I remind you is when the US, a much larger and more influential economy than China's, croaked), we can live through China having a bit of a stumble and fall.


Then u have to provide me figures to prove that the Chinese economy rely on fixed asset investments. Last year, China's industrial production value exceeded that of USA, China making more things than any nation in the world, the economy is much healthier than the developed nations that rely on financial market and services. 
The high fixed investments that catch people attentions is the result of the current China economical stage, China is still going through industrialization, our infrastructure is still behind that of the developed nations, and China is experiencing the the massive urbanization that is unseen in the human history. And also chinese government are not gods, they do make mistakes, the real estate crisis was formed because of them, and my countrymen are seeing the efforts of the government tackling this problem.
And China is still the fastest growing major nations in the world, we are very confident of them, because they always create results that exceeded their own expectations. And other developing countries which their government shouting that they will grow faster than China are still far behind that of the chinese growth, I think they should do more actions than empty talks that worth nothing.


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## yankeesfan1000

Kenwen said:


> Then u have to provide me figures to prove that the Chinese economy rely on fixed asset investments...


Read the article I posted on the last page of this thread, or you can pretend like it's not there. Government spending on fixed assets has surpassed manufacturing as the largest contributor to GDP. Government spending on infrastructure, like roads, bridges, ports, etc, is a good thing, but this goes way beyond that.

You're claim that China's economy is healthier than that in the industrialized world is so ridiculous I'm at a loss for words...


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## Jay

China has to grow smartly, no country can keep the growth rate it has for too long, the rise will not last forever. When the rise ends, and there are empty buildings and poor people, things are going to get ugly. 

China needs to work on making its people richer, before they go on building massive projects that no one uses. Per capita income going up takes a lot of time, it takes decades for a country to become fully developed at times.


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## HK999

Kenwen said:


> Then u have to provide me figures to prove that the Chinese economy rely on fixed asset investments. Last year, China's industrial production value exceeded that of USA, China making more things than any nation in the world, the economy is much healthier than the developed nations that rely on financial market and services.
> The high fixed investments that catch people attentions is the result of the current China economical stage, China is still going through industrialization, our infrastructure is still behind that of the developed nations, and China is experiencing the the massive urbanization that is unseen in the human history. And also chinese government are not gods, they do make mistakes, the real estate crisis was formed because of them, and my countrymen are seeing the efforts of the government tackling this problem.
> And China is still the fastest growing major nations in the world, we are very confident of them, because they always create results that exceeded their own expectations. And other developing countries which their government shouting that they will grow faster than China are still far behind that of the chinese growth, I think they should do more actions than empty talks that worth nothing.


How's father doing? Did he finally join the party?



conc.man said:


> Well, I am doing the opposite, trying hard to buy an apartment in Beijing recently, I think it's a low risk investment, but seems impossible now, authorities has heavily restricted house buying since last year, they just simply say you cant buy it, really annoying.


Join the CPC, and you can buy anything. All doors are open.


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## skyridgeline

_"I know very well that the reform will not be an easy one and the reform will not be able to succeed without the consciousness, the support, the enthusiasm and creativity of our people," Wen said._

- BEIJING, March 14 (Xinhua) English.news.cn 2012-03-14 11:49:22


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## Jay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJntN2Dfy38&feature=relmfu

interesting video from Aljazeera English ^^


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## Skyrazer

Kenwen said:


> Then u have to provide me figures to prove that the Chinese economy rely on fixed asset investments. Last year, China's industrial production value exceeded that of USA, China making more things than any nation in the world, the economy is much healthier than the developed nations that rely on financial market and services.
> The high fixed investments that catch people attentions is the result of the current China economical stage, China is still going through industrialization, our infrastructure is still behind that of the developed nations, and China is experiencing the the massive urbanization that is unseen in the human history. And also chinese government are not gods, they do make mistakes, the real estate crisis was formed because of them, and my countrymen are seeing the efforts of the government tackling this problem.
> And China is still the fastest growing major nations in the world, we are very confident of them, because they always create results that exceeded their own expectations. And other developing countries which their government shouting that they will grow faster than China are still far behind that of the chinese growth, I think they should do more actions than empty talks that worth nothing.


What, provide those trustworthy figures which go through the mandatory central govt filter? :|

Look, I'm not doubting China's growth and forward momentum, but all that non or under-utilised infrastructure and hard assets they keep building is creating some serious headwinds that are and will continue to cause problems for the country. They maybe the fastest growing country economically in the world, undergoing changes to a degree not seen in past history, but that does not exempt them from the rules of reality and the fundamental forces of markets.

I'm not saying they're going to crash and burn into the dark ages, but they will have to undertake some painful adjustments (if they are not already).


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## skyridgeline

_“I think the main figure that matters to all of us, including people in the media, is: How does GDP per capita grow? And those figures have been very good. There is a huge flux both up and down, so it isn’t like we’re all static in status. What’s important is that pie grows. ”_
- http://www.25iq.com/charlie-munger-quotations/


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## skyridgeline

Uploaded by EconCat88 on Jul 21, 2011 







Ghost:uh: ("creepy little girl")

Uploaded by stuckincustoms on Oct 5, 2011


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## little universe

^^

:master: Those are so classic! Ghost men/鬼佬(Chinese People call White guys) were exploring Ghost Shopping Mall and Ghost Theme Park! At the end of the latter one the ghost man with yankee accent scared some innocent little puppies in the ruined castle. :rofl:


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## Hallavaara

I personally don't think these ghost cities are anything else than foolish investments by some misguided individuals, and not a sign of a bigger issue.

China has a lot of wealthy people, and few ways to spend money since most people don't trust the banks or have means to purchase stocks or whatever. so they just buy real estate, with little regard on their true value.
But unlike here in Europe, there's very little dept involved in buying real estate, so even if a ghost town goes bust it's not a loss for the banks, only for the people who speculated with real estate. Who are quite rich to begin with, seeing as they can purchase more apartments 50-100 % debt-free.


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## Kenwen

Hallavaara said:


> I personally don't think these ghost cities are anything else than foolish investments by some misguided individuals, and not a sign of a bigger issue.
> 
> China has a lot of wealthy people, and few ways to spend money since most people don't trust the banks or have means to purchase stocks or whatever. so they just buy real estate, with little regard on their true value.
> But unlike here in Europe, there's very little dept involved in buying real estate, so even if a ghost town goes bust it's not a loss for the banks, only for the people who speculated with real estate. Who are quite rich to begin with, seeing as they can purchase more apartments 50-100 % debt-free.


Good point!


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## Skyprince

Many ghost towns , ghost parks, ghost bus/train terminals here in malaysia had been suffering initially for few years, but finally with population and economic growth they are finally filled up.

"Ghost town" phenomenon is normal IMO

It's better to over-build than having shortage of supply. Empty buildings don't kill anyone :laugh:


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## earthJoker

little universe said:


> ^^
> 
> :master: Those are so classic! Ghost men/鬼佬(Chinese People call White guys) were exploring Ghost Shopping Mall and Ghost Theme Park! At the end of the latter one the ghost man with yankee accent scared some innocent little puppies in the ruined castle. :rofl:


Yeah, let's have some good old racism now end then :banana:

Ah wait, it isn't racism if you talk about the white.
hno:


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## Chrissib

Skyprince said:


> Many ghost towns , ghost parks, ghost bus/train terminals here in malaysia had been suffering initially for few years, but finally with population and economic growth they are finally filled up.
> 
> "Ghost town" phenomenon is normal IMO
> 
> It's better to over-build than having shortage of supply. Empty buildings don't kill anyone :laugh:


The difference is that Malaysia has a decent and balanced population growth, so Malay developers can almost always be sure that their developments fill up with time, not so in China. The massive urbanisation wave of the 80s, 90s and 00s is turning to an end, and the supply of new rural people wanting to go to the cities is shrinking every day. At the same time the Chinese cities need ever more people to fill it's appartements because of the one child policy the fertility rate in cities is very low and many cities would loose population if there were no internal migration.


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## Kenwen

Chrissib said:


> The difference is that Malaysia has a decent and balanced population growth, so Malay developers can almost always be sure that their developments fill up with time, not so in China. The massive urbanisation wave of the 80s, 90s and 00s is turning to an end, and the supply of new rural people wanting to go to the cities is shrinking every day. At the same time the Chinese cities need ever more people to fill it's appartements because of the one child policy the fertility rate in cities is very low and many cities would loose population if there were no internal migration.


Lol, to an end? 49% of total population of China still lives in villages, at least half of them will move to cities in 2 decades time, we are looking at over 200 million people migrating to cities from their villages. 
Even the house price drops to the price thats affordable for the poorest cities dwellers, there is still a big shortage with the massive amount of completed apartments and the ones being built for the current city dwellers, not to mentioned the 200 million more moving to cities in the next two decades. So demand will remain high for at least 30 to 40 more years to come. The main problems here is not over built but how should the government control the house price to a affordable level for the majority. If the urbanization rate of China is not getting over 80%, there will always be real estate boom, so does the cities will not stop growing until that point. 
Cities like Beijing and Shanghai is still growing like 1 million plus per annum, not to mentions some others smaller cities which are growing much faster than the big one.


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## Jay

earthJoker said:


> Yeah, let's have some good old racism now end then :banana:
> 
> Ah wait, it isn't racism if you talk about the white.
> hno:


Sometimes people need to make fun of others to feel big, compensating for something else that might be too small, in little universe's case.


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## Rekarte

So old those pics and video...


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## yankeesfan1000

Kenwen said:


> Lol, to an end? 49% of total population of China still lives in villages, at least half of them will move to cities in 2 decades time, we are looking at over 200 million people migrating to cities from their villages.
> Even the house price drops to the price thats affordable for the poorest cities dwellers, there is still a big shortage with the massive amount of completed apartments and the ones being built for the current city dwellers, not to mentioned the 200 million more moving to cities in the next two decades. So demand will remain high for at least 30 to 40 more years to come. The main problems here is not over built but how should the government control the house price to a affordable level for the majority. If the urbanization rate of China is not getting over 80%, there will always be real estate boom, so does the cities will not stop growing until that point.
> Cities like Beijing and Shanghai is still growing like 1 million plus per annum, not to mentions some others smaller cities which are growing much faster than the big one.


Wrong again, Shanghai and Beijing don't grow at 1M a year. You're off by 40%.


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## foxmulder

Classic


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## hc_ge

Ghost people talk about ghost cities. Yeah,China is declining and Indian asan, EU and USA are shining


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## little universe

Jay said:


> Getting a building approved in China must be the easiest thing ever, all you have to say is "it's big" and the city council will love it.


Yeah, yeah, what a perfect logic!

It could be equally applied to the US case.

Getting *a massive war *approved in the US must be the easiest thing ever, all you have to say is "*It's Islamic Terrorists*" and the congress will love it.

God Bless America! USA! USA! :banana::banana:


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## Chrissib

little universe said:


> Yeah, yeah, what a perfect logic!
> 
> It could be equally applied to the US case.
> 
> Getting *a massive war *approved in the US must be the easiest thing ever, all you have to say is "*It's Islamic Terrorists*" and the congress will love it.
> 
> God Bless America! USA! USA! :banana::banana:


:nuts::nuts::nuts::nuts::nuts::nuts::nuts::nuts:

Go back to your communist dreamland.


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## Kenwen

yankeesfan1000 said:


> Wrong again, Shanghai and Beijing don't grow at 1M a year. You're off by 40%.


I might get my figure wrong for pop growth of Beijing Shanghai, but that doesn't change the fact there are still 49% rural population that will keep migrating to cities in the foreseeable future.


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## Jay

little universe said:


> Yeah, yeah, what a perfect logic!
> 
> It could be equally applied to the US case.
> 
> Getting *a massive war *approved in the US must be the easiest thing ever, all you have to say is "*It's Islamic Terrorists*" and the congress will love it.
> 
> God Bless America! USA! USA! :banana::banana:



that quote was about a building and wasn't from this thread

you act like China's military agenda in Tibet is so innocent... what hypocrisy.


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## calaguyo

Kenwen said:


> And China is still the fastest growing major nations in the world, we are very confident of them, because they always create results that exceeded their own expectations. And other developing countries which their government shouting that they will grow faster than China are still far behind that of the chinese growth, I think they should do more actions than empty talks that worth nothing.



Healthy is not the appropriate word to describe China economy. China is like Floyd Mayweather who injected himself a steroid inorder to last long in the boxing arena. 

China was once the apple of the eye of world in terms of manufacturing due to extremely low operating cost and faster cycle time. That was 10 years ago or so. Would you believe that despite of being third world, Filipino billionaires are also investing in China? That's how competitive they are. 

But now, Yuan is skyrocketing it's value like there's no tommorow and it is affecting their major investors. For me, it's more of greed. Don't they know the simple law of supply and demand?

I was surprised with my client in Bulgaria when I ask him why can't he move his plant to China for cheaper operating cost? He simply uttered, "here in Bulgaria, you can pay people EUR100 per month to operate machines, in China, I need to pay more than that, why would I go so far?"


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## skyridgeline

Stoyan Nenov/Reuters , nytimes.com











> Late in 2009, Great Wall Motor started talks with a potential Bulgarian partner for construction of an assembly plant, its first in Europe, on abandoned farmland outside Bahovitsa, *a quiet village near Lovech in northern Bulgaria*.
> 
> The plant opened officially in February, turning out three models — the Voleex C10, a small five-door hatchback powered by a 1.5-liter engine; a pickup truck; and a sport utility vehicle. Prices start at 16,000 Bulgarian lev, or about $10,400. The plant can produce as many as 50,000 cars a year.
> 
> For now, the Bahovitsa facility assembles cars from kits manufactured and painted in China. But plans call for welding and painting shops to be added over the next few years, to accommodate the entire production cycle.


- By BORYANA DZHAMBAZOVA Published: May 22, 2012 , nytimes.com


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## maldini

Kenwen said:


> I might get my figure wrong for pop growth of Beijing Shanghai, but that doesn't change the fact there are still 49% rural population that will keep migrating to cities in the foreseeable future.


In China, there is a shortage of housing. That is why the prices are still relatively high. Strict mortgage requirements prevent speculation.
Every time there is a sale by the developers, the consumers just bought up all the units.

They still need to build more units to accommodate the rapid urbanization process.


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## Chrissib

Kenwen said:


> I might get my figure wrong for pop growth of Beijing Shanghai, but that doesn't change the fact there are still 49% rural population that will keep migrating to cities in the foreseeable future.


But what if the current buildings that are being built now are not the buildings the people want? I can imagine when the Chinese are getting richer they want something better than just a commieblock flat, like a rowhome or even a detached home. Those more or less centrally planned commieblock houses are not the home an affluent society wants.


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## endymar

Looks like China is building the biggest film sets in the world. They want to outdo Bondarchuk's "War & Peace" times hundred.


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## yankeesfan1000

calaguyo said:


> Healthy is not the appropriate word to describe China economy. China is like Floyd Mayweather who injected himself a steroid inorder to last long in the boxing arena.
> 
> China was once the apple of the eye of world in terms of manufacturing due to extremely low operating cost and faster cycle time. That was 10 years ago or so. Would you believe that despite of being third world, Filipino billionaires are also investing in China? That's how competitive they are.
> 
> But now, Yuan is skyrocketing it's value like there's no tommorow and it is affecting their major investors. For me, it's more of greed. Don't they know the simple law of supply and demand?
> 
> I was surprised with my client in Bulgaria when I ask him why can't he move his plant to China for cheaper operating cost? He simply uttered, "here in Bulgaria, you can pay people EUR100 per month to operate machines, in China, I need to pay more than that, why would I go so far?"


He lives in an alternate universe. We're beginning to see manufacturing actually leave China, 1, 2. It's far from a mass exodus, but if the yuan continues its climb, and wages continue to rise, more and more companies will relocate to Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, etc, hell even a good deal of that manufacturing is coming back to the US as a result of a weak dollar and high transportation costs.

"... Lew Frankfort, chief executive of Coach, said rapid income increases in China meant the company is beginning to move production to less expensive Asian countries like India, Vietnam and the Philippines...

... Dan Harris, a lawyer at HarrisMoure, said he is seeing more and more companies seeking advice about leaving China.

“We’re working with one company a month that’s leaving China these days, and probably before a year ago, we saw about one a year,” he told FT Tilt. “It’s labour costs and it’s taxes and pensions, which are also a part of labour costs. Rent and utilities are rising and the yuan may not be appreciating rapidly, but slowly but surely it [the Yuan] is appreciating.”
1


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## Jay

yankeesfan1000 said:


> He lives in an alternate universe. We're beginning to see manufacturing actually leave China, 1, 2.


*More manufacturing work returns to U.S. shores*

http://www.chicagotribune.com/site/n...860,full.story


a few million of those jobs have just returned to the USA


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## yankeesfan1000

Good point. As long as the dollar remains relatively weak, and transportation costs (i.e. gasoline) remain high, that trend should continue.


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## Kenwen

calaguyo said:


> Healthy is not the appropriate word to describe China economy. China is like Floyd Mayweather who injected himself a steroid inorder to last long in the boxing arena.
> 
> China was once the apple of the eye of world in terms of manufacturing due to extremely low operating cost and faster cycle time. That was 10 years ago or so. Would you believe that despite of being third world, Filipino billionaires are also investing in China? That's how competitive they are.
> 
> But now, Yuan is skyrocketing it's value like there's no tommorow and it is affecting their major investors. For me, it's more of greed. Don't they know the simple law of supply and demand?
> 
> I was surprised with my client in Bulgaria when I ask him why can't he move his plant to China for cheaper operating cost? He simply uttered, "here in Bulgaria, you can pay people EUR100 per month to operate machines, in China, I need to pay more than that, why would I go so far?"


That doesn't really matter, cuz the major investors on chinese land are the domestic firms, FDI is less than 10 percent of the total investment. China's major advantage is the effect of industrial clusters and good infra, wage doesn't matter that much. Since the day government allows the appreciation of yuan and increase minimum wage, they knows the consequences will benefit the economy, no country on earth can force the chinese government to do things they don't want. Increase in wage and appreciate of yuan is well suit the government plan of consumption driven economy and climbing the value chain, China stop welcoming crappy FDI, we have enough cash in m2.


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## yankeesfan1000

Kenwen said:


> That doesn't really matter, cuz the major investors on chinese land are the domestic firms, *FDI is less than 10 percent of the total investment*. China's major advantage is the effect of industrial clusters and good infra, wage doesn't matter that much. Since the day government allows the appreciation of yuan and increase minimum wage, they knows the consequences will benefit the economy, no country on earth can force the chinese government to do things they don't want. Increase in wage and appreciate of yuan is well suit the government plan of consumption driven economy and climbing the value chain, China stop welcoming crappy FDI, we have enough cash in m2.


First, do you have a source for what I bolded? An economy that is so dependent on government debt spending and exports is extremely vulnerable to economic slow downs in other countries. If the EU continues to slip, they will import less from China. We're already seeing manufacturing not only leave China, but China manufacturing is slowing as a result of the Europe debacle. The PMI came in at 48.7, under 50 again. 

Also clearly wage does matter. From what I posted right above you, so you're wrong. "... Lew Frankfort, chief executive of Coach, said rapid income increases in China meant the company is beginning to move production to less expensive Asian countries like India, Vietnam and the Philippines...

... Dan Harris, a lawyer at HarrisMoure, said he is seeing more and more companies seeking advice about leaving China.

“We’re working with one company a month that’s leaving China these days, and probably before a year ago, we saw about one a year,” he told FT Tilt. “It’s labour costs and it’s taxes and pensions, which are also a part of labour costs. Rent and utilities are rising and the yuan may not be appreciating rapidly, but slowly but surely it [the Yuan] is appreciating.”

Your posts lack a basic understanding of, well everything.


----------



## calaguyo

Kenwen said:


> That doesn't really matter, cuz the major investors on chinese land are the domestic firms, FDI is less than 10 percent of the total investment. China's major advantage is the effect of industrial clusters and good infra, wage doesn't matter that much. Since the day government allows the appreciation of yuan and increase minimum wage, they knows the consequences will benefit the economy, no country on earth can force the chinese government to do things they don't want. Increase in wage and appreciate of yuan is well suit the government plan of consumption driven economy and climbing the value chain, China stop welcoming crappy FDI, we have enough cash in m2.



Well, I hope, China would increase its domestic consumption but no way they could beat their previous 9% or 10% GDP increase esp when FDI are slowly pulling out. A healthy GDP should only play into 5-7% increase year after year.


----------



## calaguyo

yankeesfan1000 said:


> Good point. As long as the dollar remains relatively weak, and transportation costs (i.e. gasoline) remain high, that trend should continue.


Manufacturing is the biggest selling point of China. The problem with the manufacturing sector, there are so many affecting factors in the operation such as raw materials, wide production plants, utilities, logistics, manpower etc...

I understand if US will do such turnaround. 

Unlike in India and Philippines, BPO is one of their biggest selling point and unlike manufacturing, only small office (for 100 people), utilities, and computers, manpower ($1-1.5 per hour salary) will do.


----------



## Kenwen

yankeesfan1000 said:


> First, do you have a source for what I bolded? An economy that is so dependent on government debt spending and exports is extremely vulnerable to economic slow downs in other countries. If the EU continues to slip, they will import less from China. We're already seeing manufacturing not only leave China, but China manufacturing is slowing as a result of the Europe debacle. The PMI came in at 48.7, under 50 again.
> 
> Also clearly wage does matter. From what I posted right above you, so you're wrong. "... Lew Frankfort, chief executive of Coach, said rapid income increases in China meant the company is beginning to move production to less expensive Asian countries like India, Vietnam and the Philippines...
> 
> ... Dan Harris, a lawyer at HarrisMoure, said he is seeing more and more companies seeking advice about leaving China.
> 
> “We’re working with one company a month that’s leaving China these days, and probably before a year ago, we saw about one a year,” he told FT Tilt. “It’s labour costs and it’s taxes and pensions, which are also a part of labour costs. Rent and utilities are rising and the yuan may not be appreciating rapidly, but slowly but surely it [the Yuan] is appreciating.”
> 
> Your posts lack a basic understanding of, well everything.


Like I said earlier, those sweat shop that can only make profit by taking the advantage of cheap labour are welcome to leave China,under the current policy of climbing the industrial value chain. The amount of FDI that china receive each year are like 600 to 700 billions usd, and 70 percent of them came from hk,over 20percent of them from Taiwan, compare to trillions of investment from china itself. Chinese government do not support the sweat shops like it used to do, 60,000 sweat shops in Guangdong along died out, but the government did nothing to help them, and yuan at the same time are allowed to appreciate. That shows the government don't really care about these low tech, labour intensive sweat shops. China will transform its economy to more technology and knowledge base economy, their actions toward these sweat shops compare to the massive amount of subsidy that high tech and high value added companies recieve shows the will of the governments, they can move to Vietnam, Philippines or Indonesia we don't really care, our keep increasing lowest wage will stop them from coming back again.


----------



## maldini

Chrissib said:


> But what if the current buildings that are being built now are not the buildings the people want? I can imagine when the Chinese are getting richer they want something better than just a commieblock flat, like a rowhome or even a detached home. Those more or less centrally planned commieblock houses are not the home an affluent society wants.


Those are regular apartment buildings in Asia, not commieblock flat like you claimed.
Apartment buildings in China are mostly built by private developers, not centrally planned by the government like you claimed.
Even the affluent in Asia live in apartments. You should just stop judging others using your outdated western ideas.

The demand for such apartments by the people moving into Chinese cities is big. You should just watch and learn.


----------



## Chrissib

little universe said:


> That's an insult to Kenwen! If that's your motivation behind learning Chinese!
> Plus Kenwen's hometown Dongguan is way bigger than your hometown Hamburg (if i wasn't wrong it is the 2nd largest city in Germany) in terms of population! :cheers:


No, that's Berlin. Berlin's metro area has 4.5 million inhabitants, Hamburg's 3 million. Hamburg is number four behind Rhein-Ruhr, Berlin and Frankfurt.


----------



## Rinchinlhumbe

little universe said:


> That's an insult to Kenwen! If that's your motivation behind learning Chinese!:


With his hostile and disresepctful stance related to anything outside China he gives Chinese people a bad name. What about some modesty? Im sure it will earn him more sympathies if he does not start each of his posts with "Thats bullshit, China will never..."
Ive been living in Shanghai for over 3 years and really loved it and, believe me, I do not like the biased reporting of Western media putting the blame on China. But it is just okay to remind some some Chinese people about some challenges looming up in the future if it happens in a polite tone. Every country has its challenges, so does a diverse and huge country like China and it does not necessarily mean that China is a backward, non civilized country.
Even the Chinese government seems to realize that and this strengthens my convicition that Kenwen has either been brainwashed or is lacking in self-confidence. 



little universe said:


> Plus Kenwen's hometown Dongguan is way bigger than your hometown Hamburg (if i wasn't wrong it is the 2nd largest city in Germany) in terms of population! :cheers:


Actually, Dongguan is three time bigger than Hamburg. So what? In turn it means: more fresh air, less crowds, less congestion. And even if not...who cares? In contrast to Kenwen you are invited to critisize my homecountry as you like. I know that Germany is not without fault and Im fine with that and proud of it nevertheless.


----------



## little universe

^^

Easy, easy, you angry Teutons! :lol:

If anyone wanna some brawls with you ATM that would be French and Greeks not us Chinese! :lol:

Ironically when i'm replying your lines i am listening to Bach's Brandenburg concertos from my computer. Where's my intention of criticizing your Deutschland lie? :cheers:


----------



## xtraxxl

Jay said:


> The largest uninhabited cities are in China, these are not cities that have been abandoned but cities that have never been occupied in the first place because people cannot affort to live in them, I am fascinated by these places even if they are an ominous warning sign to the Chinese economy.



It's not because people cannot afford to live in them, it's because people bought these properties for investment reasons.

This is a small mining town in rural China that recently boomed because of the hike in raw material prices. Many people got rich so fast and they started to invest in properties (one of the favourite investments in China). The boom was cooled down in recent years and many temporary residents left the town and this is what happened.


----------



## xtraxxl

Jay said:


> Yea it's mindboggling how people can think that empty cities and 100+ supertalls _won't_ have dire future consequences, even in a wealthy country, let a lone a developing one.



The pictures you posted here are all unfinished projects. There's even a sign in the mall saying "opening soon".


----------



## xtraxxl

yankeesfan1000 said:


> Overall demand might be higher, but I provided a quote of the CEO of Coach saying they're moving manufacturing out of China. I honestly can't think of a more reliable source on the matter.
> 
> Want to provide a source on the bolded part of what you said? Because again, I quoted the CEO of Coach saying the opposite of what you're saying...
> 
> The lack of reading comprehension in this thread is incredible.


Moving manufacturing out of China is a good thing, it means that wages in China are high enough that investors must look for a new source to produce cheap goods. I hope (and I believe) that the Chinese economy is transforming.


----------



## xtraxxl

7freedom7 said:


> The wage overheads are crucial to the labor intensive industry, the wage hikes in China will pose challenges for garment, footwear and other leather goods makers. So it's completely normal to see that Coach is relocating to Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia or Bangladesh with meagre wage structure and loose labour market regulations. You'll see more and more the clothes, shoes carrying a label "Made in Bangladesh or Vietnam" in the near future, however that doesn't mean all the industries are moving out of China tho.


Indeed. Even though investors in the labour intensive industries are moving out of China, but more and more high tech investors are moving in because China has the infrastructure and the technology to do the job at a competitive price. The infrastructure and technology in India, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Mexico simple cannot match.


----------



## xtraxxl

Chrissib said:


> Those private developers are still very big, so that doesn't make a large difference. The developments I see in Google Earth match centrally planned developments in their size.
> 
> And not all Asians live in appartements. I can think of the Japanese who are more likely to live in detached houses than Germans. South East Asia is also very detached house or rowhome dominated. Korea and Taiwan have mostly small appartement houses. HK and Singapore build commieblocks due to the lack of space. It's only China who seem to build commieblocks out of choice, although there would be enough space to built Malaysia-style rowhomes.
> Southern Asia and the Mid East are also dominated by small appartement buildings and not those large, like centrally planned developments in China.
> 
> 
> China is very unique in that case, I can only think of the Russians who build like that today.



Most Asians living in urban areas live in low & high rise apartments and that include the Japanese, Taiwanese, and Koreans. Their apartments have the same style as the ones in China. You obviously haven't been to any of these places. In rural China people live in houses as well just so you know.

Furthermore there're no centrally planned housing in China. In fact there're nothing in China that're actually centrally planned anymore. China is not a true "communist" country. Even China doesn't call itself communist anymore, it calls itself "Chinese style socialism", which basically translates into Chinese style capitalism.

I think you really should go visit China one day. It's really different from how the media portrays it.


----------



## xtraxxl

Chrissib said:


> Well, I think you got some things wrong.
> 
> I am not Turkish and have never been to Turkey.
> 
> Sure about Malaysia? When I look at Google Maps, I can find a lot of rowhome developments like these: https://maps.google.de/maps?hl=de&ll=2.974499,101.657953&spn=0.0306,0.038409&t=k&z=15
> 
> You're right about Taiwan, but the huge urbanisation wave there has already happened, so their cities won't change that much as they switch to highrises now. Most people still live in small appartement houses.
> 
> In India there is construction at a considerable speed, but still, most homes are more or less independently built small appartement homes. In outer Mumbai and Delhi there are many highrises but they are built lower than in China, mostly around 7 to 10 stories high, whereas in China there are many highrises with 20 stories.


The biggest high rise booms in Asia are in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. How can you not know this after visiting this forum for so long? This is probably the most concentrated area of skyscrapers in the world as well, have you forgotten that?


----------



## xtraxxl

Chrissib said:


> So just because I am not a Chinese, I shouldn't have an opinion? :nuts:
> 
> Your points are mostly right, but I still say that this is a unique building style of China and maybe Russia. *The living habits will change when China gets richer, today, China is still a very poor country, like Western Europe or USA around 1900. Apart from the UK, all nations built mostly appartement buildings then. *But as the population got richer, many of them choose to go suburban, and I bet this will also happen in China. The scale will be different, maybe China won't have as much suburbs as Western Europe.
> 
> It will also be important to China's demography. It is much easier to raise three kids in a rowhome than in an appartement. Studies have proven that people living in a house will get more children on average than people living in appartements.



Have you ever been to Asia before? European/American style sub-urbanization in East Asia will NEVER happen because it's just unrealistic. 

Also "like Western Europe or USA around 1900. Apart from the UK, all nations built mostly appartement buildings then." What? You don't even make any sense now buddy.

By the way, there's a huge condo/apartment boom in Canada right now, and according to your logic Canada should also be an underdeveloped area that's 112 years behind EU/US right.

(condo is basically a fancier word for a fancier apartment, condo is very North American, no one uses it in Australasia, they're all called apartments)


----------



## xtraxxl

yankeesfan1000 said:


> Wrong again, Shanghai and Beijing don't grow at 1M a year. You're off by 40%.


The Chinese statistics bureau only counts permanent residents of the cities (people who hold an ID that says they're a perm. resident of that city). If you include the "temporary" residents (newer migrants) it probably grows at a speed of way over 1mil a year.


----------



## endymar

@ chrissib.
Doesn't make sense. A decent apartment in the center of a great city costs more than some average suburban house in some shithole.
Apartment buildings grew when small towns turned into wealthy cities.
This is the logical process of a settlement.


----------



## xtraxxl

Jay said:


> that quote was about a building and wasn't from this thread
> 
> you act like China's military agenda in Tibet is so innocent... what hypocrisy.


Did you know that several well known international news agencies actually posted fake pictures in their news to attract people's attention about the Tibetan crisis a few years ago? I don't think the Chinese gov't has done a lot of good things in Tibet, but I don't think they've done things that're as bad as what the media portrays as well.


----------



## xtraxxl

calaguyo said:


> Healthy is not the appropriate word to describe China economy. China is like Floyd Mayweather who injected himself a steroid inorder to last long in the boxing arena.
> 
> China was once the apple of the eye of world in terms of manufacturing due to extremely low operating cost and faster cycle time. That was 10 years ago or so. Would you believe that despite of being third world, Filipino billionaires are also investing in China? That's how competitive they are.
> 
> But now, Yuan is skyrocketing it's value like there's no tommorow and it is affecting their major investors. For me, it's more of greed. Don't they know the simple law of supply and demand?
> 
> I was surprised with my client in Bulgaria when I ask him why can't he move his plant to China for cheaper operating cost? He simply uttered, "here in Bulgaria, you can pay people EUR100 per month to operate machines, in China, I need to pay more than that, why would I go so far?"


How many Filipinos have invested in China? Probably less than a handful. There're probably a lot more investments coming from China than the other way around. 

Secondly, it's true that the low wage days are long gone now, this is inevitable. However there're also a lot of high tech industries that are moving into China because it has the advanced infrastructure and technology. 

Thirdly, many Chinese companies are starting to move from labour intensive sectors into high tech areas. Lenovo and Huawei are all successful examples. Chinese cars may be sh*tty but you know what, they have their dealerships in Australia & New Zealand now. This is how S.Korea and Japan was like before they experienced the lift off as well.


----------



## xtraxxl

Jay said:


> China has to grow smartly, no country can keep the growth rate it has for too long, the rise will not last forever. When the rise ends, and there are empty buildings and poor people, things are going to get ugly.
> 
> China needs to work on making its people richer, before they go on building massive projects that no one uses. Per capita income going up takes a lot of time, it takes decades for a country to become fully developed at times.



Using fixed investment to boost economy is part of the Chinese development strategy from what I can see (and what I hope to see as well). 

Basically investing large amount of money into infrastructure will generate more money in the society and attract more investment in a long run (initially in the labour intensive sectors) This will help the society to gain more jobs and money, and it also provides an excellent opportunity for Chinese companies to learn advanced ideas and technology.

As the society grows, Chinese companies will start to look at making more money by moving into the more lucrative industries that require higher technology and are less labour intensive. As they become more successful at home, they'll start to look at expanding into the foreign markets to make more money. Eventually the society will be changed from a labour intensive manufacturing based economy into a technology based economy, provided that the transformation was successful.

This is basically what Japan, Taiwan, and S. Korea did back in the days. China is quite different compare to these countries in terms of land mass and population, and I expect the numbers to be different as well.


----------



## xtraxxl

Hallavaara said:


> I personally don't think these ghost cities are anything else than foolish investments by some misguided individuals, and not a sign of a bigger issue.


Yes this is exactly what happened. The real estate bubble bursts, the investor goes broke, and the building site is left unfinished. Most of the time the unfinished project will be taken over by another investor after the market recovers, if not the gov't will either leave it because it's too expensive to remove it (in this case it's in the middle of nowhere), or remove it completely (ie. in city centres). Abandoned sites are not very rare to find in small North American towns or ghetto American cities.




Hallavaara said:


> China has a lot of wealthy people, and few ways to spend money since most people don't trust the banks or have means to purchase stocks or whatever. so they just buy real estate, with little regard on their true value.
> But unlike here in Europe, there's very little dept involved in buying real estate, so even if a ghost town goes bust it's not a loss for the banks, only for the people who speculated with real estate. Who are quite rich to begin with, seeing as they can purchase more apartments 50-100 % debt-free.


I'm going to disagree with this one. Chinese people are actually really into investing in stocks, options, and futures etc. In fact stories of families who didn't know a thing about investment and invested their whole life's saving and lost everything in the end were pretty common to see at certain points of time (ie. when the market plunged). And Chinese people like to save money into banks more than most people in the world too because saving money is in the Chinese culture. This is true for overseas Chinese as well.

Unlike Europeans or Americans or another nationality for that matter, Chinese people like to buy real estates with as much cash as possible. Housing mortgage wasn't even a thing until recently. Again this is the same for overseas Chinese buyers too as some of you from North America/Australasia might have read in the newspaper. Does this mean that the real estate bubble in China is "healthier"? I don't know.


----------



## xtraxxl

Chrissib said:


> The difference is that Malaysia has a decent and balanced population growth, so Malay developers can almost always be sure that their developments fill up with time, not so in China. *The massive urbanisation wave of the 80s, 90s and 00s is turning to an end, and the supply of new rural people wanting to go to the cities is shrinking every day.* At the same time the Chinese cities need ever more people to fill it's appartements because of the one child policy the fertility rate in cities is very low and many cities would loose population if there were no internal migration.



Can you not BS if you don't know anything about it please? Cheers.


----------



## deepblue01

Can people upload more pictures about China's ghost cities? Or whether they have transformed into working cities now?

It's sad to see all this rubbish being discussed here. Time and time again, this type of discussion emerges from chinese threads. Next topic in this thread is probably going to be Chinese politics....


----------



## Rinchinlhumbe

little universe said:


> ^^
> 
> Easy, easy, you angry Teutons! :lol:
> 
> If anyone wanna some brawls with you ATM that would be French and Greeks not us Chinese! :lol:
> 
> Ironically when i'm replying your lines i am listening to Bach's Brandenburg concertos from my computer. Where's my intention of criticizing your Deutschland lie? :cheers:


Im not angry at all, actually I like this kind of discussion. If somebody comes up with nationalist phrases I take my right to voice my opinion, thats all. As you know, we Germans have learnt our lesson with nationalist powered megalomania...

Btw pls help me translating the second paragraph. Maybe my English is too weak but I simply do not get it: "I am an ATM machine starting a fight with Greece"?:nuts:

Enjoy the music!:cheers:


----------



## Kenwen

Rinchinlhumbe said:


> With his hostile and disresepctful stance related to anything outside China he gives Chinese people a bad name. What about some modesty? Im sure it will earn him more sympathies if he does not start each of his posts with "Thats bullshit, China will never..."
> Ive been living in Shanghai for over 3 years and really loved it and, believe me, I do not like the biased reporting of Western media putting the blame on China. But it is just okay to remind some some Chinese people about some challenges looming up in the future if it happens in a polite tone. Every country has its challenges, so does a diverse and huge country like China and it does not necessarily mean that China is a backward, non civilized country.
> Even the Chinese government seems to realize that and this strengthens my convicition that Kenwen has either been brainwashed or is lacking in self-confidence.


I'm hostile? Many people here who doesn't know the present situations here are discussing how is China going down, at least provide me some facts and figures before u can convince me to shut up. It's my right to say what ever I want to say here, if u don't like it do not read it, I don't know how you can get piss so easily, u need an anger manager therapy. And your unpoliteness shows who you really are, at least I haven't personal attack someone, unlike u uncivilized farmers, go home milk your cows. 
You are certainly being brainwash by your country's media, statement like u chinese are being brainwash is always the laughing source for me, cuz so many people like u can easily fooled by your country's media and think every Chinese are brainwashed. You are the one whose lacking self confidence, I just don't understand how u can get so angry when someone discussing matters that's none related to u, grow up boy. People like u are giving bad names for your country, now I understand how come there are so many football hooligans in Germany.



Actually said:


> I'm happy for people criticizing my country, have I ever said the real estate is in good shape and not a problem? I've clearly said the government is solving this problem. Since u've been living in China for long time can u at least show me your certain knowledge of what China really is, people like u whose yelling: China is going down, look at these photos. Who cares Hamburg has more fresh air and less congested, so does millions of chinese small towns and villages.


----------



## hc_ge

Kenwen said:


> I'm hostile? Many people here who doesn't know the present situations here are discussing how is China going down, at least provide me some facts and figures before u can convince me to shut up. It's my right to say what ever I want to say here, if u don't like it do not read it, I don't know how you can get piss so easily, u need an anger manager therapy. And your unpoliteness shows who you really are, at least I haven't personal attack someone, unlike u uncivilized farmers, go home milk your cows.
> You are certainly being brainwash by your country's media, statement like u chinese are being brainwash is always the laughing source for me, cuz so many people like u can easily fooled by your country's media and think every Chinese are brainwashed. You are the one whose lacking self confidence, I just don't understand how u can get so angry when someone discussing matters that's none related to u, grow up boy. People like u are giving bad names for your country, now I understand how come there are so many football hooligans in Germany.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm happy for people criticizing my country, have I ever said the real estate is in good shape and not a problem? I've clearly said the government is solving this problem. Since u've been living in China for long time can u at least show me your certain knowledge of what China really is, people like u whose yelling: China is going down, look at these photos. Who cares Hamburg has more fresh air and less congested, so does millions of chinese small towns and villages.


Kenwen, we should tolerate different voices. as a chinese, we know what runs in china. no matter what others see/say about us, china is china. we are on our own way.


----------



## little universe

Rinchinlhumbe said:


> Im not angry at all, actually I like this kind of discussion. If somebody comes up with nationalist phrases I take my right to voice my opinion, thats all. As you know, we Germans have learnt our lesson with nationalist powered megalomania...
> 
> Btw pls help me translating the second paragraph. Maybe my English is too weak but I simply do not get it: "I am an ATM machine starting a fight with Greece"?:nuts:
> 
> Enjoy the music!:cheers:


ATM (at the moment) :lol:

 My computer changed tune to Carl Orff's Carmina Burana which was first staged in 1937. I could hear Germany as an rising power and the national proud the composer try to interpret from the work...Germany raided Poland, dragged the whole Europe into the devastating war that was 2 years after 1937... I guess as a German you learned a valuable lesson from it. 

When i look at the current affairs, i do start worrying about the increasing irrational nationalism in China. I guess the internaional society feel more so for the sheer size of the country.

I would like to see my home country eventually accept the Universal Value (maybe flavoured with some Chinese Cultural Identities) in the forseeable future, although some of my compatriots would not agree. :cheers:


----------



## Kenwen

little universe said:


> ATM (at the moment) :lol:
> 
> My computer changed tune to Carl Orff's Carmina Burana which was first staged in 1937. I could hear Germany as an rising power and the national proud the composer try to interpret from the work...Germany raided Poland, dragged the whole Europe into the devastating war that was 2 years after 1937... I guess as a German you learned a valuable lesson from it.
> 
> When i look at the current affairs, i do start worrying about the increasing irrational nationalism in China. I guess the internaional society feel more so for the sheer size of the country.
> 
> I would like to see my home country eventually accept the Universal Value (maybe flavoured with some Chinese Cultural Identities) in the forseeable future, although some of my compatriots would not agree. :cheers:


Democracy does not function properly all the time, once the governments are control by the big corps( USA), they will act unreasonable to the vast public( spend huge sum of money in wars and weapons in a economy downturn while millions of people are homeless and starving), but only reasonable to the interest group( weapon companies in USA gets lots of orders from the government budget).
I'm sure people in China will find a better system in the future, China is the first country in the world to abandoned feudalism since Emperor Qin, and maximized their countrymen's talents to governed the country by selecting governors from open examinations rather than posts being inherited, it was disrupted after the Manchurian occupations to turn everyone into slaves and forbid free thinking.


----------



## Chrissib

xtraxxl said:


> Most Asians living in urban areas live in low & high rise apartments and that include the Japanese, Taiwanese, and Koreans. Their apartments have the same style as the ones in China. You obviously haven't been to any of these places. In rural China people live in houses as well just so you know.
> 
> Furthermore there're no centrally planned housing in China. In fact there're nothing in China that're actually centrally planned anymore. China is not a true "communist" country. Even China doesn't call itself communist anymore, it calls itself "Chinese style socialism", which basically translates into Chinese style capitalism.
> 
> I think you really should go visit China one day. It's really different from how the media portrays it.


You haven't ever looked on different Asian cities in Google Earth, have you? Japanese cities look totally different than Chinese cities. In the prefecture of Tokyo, 30% of all people live in detached houses, in Osaka 40% and in Aichi prefecture more than 50%. In Japan there are only very few China like developments, in taiwan some more and in krea they build a lot of it, although the housing stock is still dominated by small appartement buildings.

I never said that housing in China is centrally planned, I just said it looks like that.


----------



## George W. Bush

xtraxxl said:


> Unlike Europeans or Americans or another nationality for that matter, Chinese people like to buy real estates with as much cash as possible. Housing mortgage wasn't even a thing until recently. Again this is the same for overseas Chinese buyers too as some of you from North America/Australasia might have read in the newspaper. Does this mean that the real estate bubble in China is "healthier"? I don't know.


Not healthier, but less unwholesome. If the building frenzy is not excessively credit-financed then it at least won't trigger a banking crisis like in USA, Spain and Ireland, countries in which the economy is mired in a shitload of real estate related debt.


----------



## Chrissib

xtraxxl said:


> Have you ever been to Asia before? European/American style sub-urbanization in East Asia will NEVER happen because it's just unrealistic.
> 
> Also "like Western Europe or USA around 1900. Apart from the UK, all nations built mostly appartement buildings then." What? You don't even make any sense now buddy.
> 
> By the way, there's a huge condo/apartment boom in Canada right now, and according to your logic Canada should also be an underdeveloped area that's 112 years behind EU/US right.
> 
> (condo is basically a fancier word for a fancier apartment, condo is very North American, no one uses it in Australasia, they're all called apartments)


There may be booms and busts in Canada, but the Canadian cities are still dominated by their suburban housing which is growing as well. Roughly 50% of all Torontonians live in detached houses and 45% in Vancouver. I'd only call Montreal appartement dominated, the percentage there is around 40% in detached houses.

Just saying there is a boom because there is some construction of highrise condos in the inner city isn't sufficient for saying that the whole of Canada lives in appartements.


----------



## Chrissib

xtraxxl said:


> Can you not BS if you don't know anything about it please? Cheers.


Your insults tell me a lot about your intelligence... :lol:

The Chinese cities won't continue to grow at 3-4% a year in this decade. It's just normal that the urbanisation wave slows down when already 50% of the population lives in cities. Or can you conjure more people out of nothing who will move to cities? I think not.


----------



## Chrissib

xtraxxl said:


> The biggest high rise booms in Asia are in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. How can you not know this after visiting this forum for so long? This is probably the most concentrated area of skyscrapers in the world as well, have you forgotten that?


The boom will end. Nobody can cheat on demographic developments.


----------



## George W. Bush

Chrissib said:


> The Chinese cities won't continue to grow at 3-4% a year in this decade. It's just normal that the urbanisation wave slows down when already 50% of the population lives in cities. Or can you conjure more people out of nothing who will move to cities? I think not.


50% don't make China a highly urbanized country. In Brazil and some other emerging economies more or less 90% of the population live in cities. So there is still plenty of migration potential in China.


----------



## chornedsnorkack

Out of the slightly over 50% of Chinese who already actually live in cities, how many are:

young and single illegal immigrants on low-paid jobs, who would be glad to get better salary, legal hukou of the city where they actually live, found a family and move from cramped hostels where they may now be living to big apartments of their own?

young born citizens of their cities who are now living in small homes with their families but who would also be glad to move to big apartments of their own?


----------



## Rinchinlhumbe

Kenwen said:


> I'm hostile? Many people here who doesn't know the present situations here are discussing how is China going down, at least provide me some facts and figures before u can convince me to shut up. It's my right to say what ever I want to say here, if u don't like it do not read it, I don't know how you can get piss so easily, u need an anger manager therapy. And your unpoliteness shows who you really are, at least I haven't personal attack someone, unlike u uncivilized farmers, go home milk your cows.
> You are certainly being brainwash by your country's media, statement like u chinese are being brainwash is always the laughing source for me, cuz so many people like u can easily fooled by your country's media and think every Chinese are brainwashed. You are the one whose lacking self confidence, I just don't understand how u can get so angry when someone discussing matters that's none related to u, grow up boy. People like u are giving bad names for your country, now I understand how come there are so many football hooligans in Germany.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm happy for people criticizing my country, have I ever said the real estate is in good shape and not a problem? I've clearly said the government is solving this problem. Since u've been living in China for long time can u at least show me your certain knowledge of what China really is, people like u whose yelling: China is going down, look at these photos. Who cares Hamburg has more fresh air and less congested, so does millions of chinese small towns and villages.


Finally a reply from my sweetie.:cheer:
"Hostile" may sound a bit extreme, lets put it at "ignorant".
Your facts are mostly right, but they are based on a sinocentric view. I doubt you recognize that otherwise we would not have this discussion.
You highlight everything which is positive about China and stress everything what is negative about the outside world. Best example: you compare Kuwaits manufacturing sector to the Chinese and assume that Kuweit has nothing worthwhile to offer to the world except oil - hello??? Kuweit: 3 million people. China: 1.400 millioin people. 
It is not really annoying to learn from you in all of your postings that China is on the top of everything. But it gets quite lame after a while.

One genius-like hint from my side for you: read what I am writing here. It makes life a lot easier.
One the previous page I wrote: "Ive been living in Shanghai for over 3 years and really loved it and, believe me, I do not like the biased reporting of Western media putting the blame on China."

I dislike some Western medias attitude to reduce everything what is going in China on human rights violation, the Tibet conflict, counterfeits, enviromental pollution. Having lived in China for 3 years I can tell right from wrong. Why should I be brainwashed? Only because it makes life easier for you?



Kenwen said:


> It's my right to say what ever I want to say here, if u don't like it do not read it


Correct. Unfortunately it does apply to all users not only you.



Kenwen said:


> least provide me some facts and figures before u can convince me to shut up


Done by various posters on the first pages. BTW, nobody wants to bash China - some people just point out some single worrying tendencies, which are even recognized by the central government. I do not understand why you react so harsh to this?
Nobody here is denying Chinas achievements in the past 30 years....



Kenwen said:


> u need an anger manager therapy


Faboulous idea. Please make an offer.



Kenwen said:


> uncivilized farmers, go home milk your cows


Sry for that.



Kenwen said:


> how come there are so many football hooligans in Germany.


Been to a German football match? btw, simplification/prejudice



Kenwen said:


> You are certainly being brainwash by your country's media


NO! We have a free press in Germany, I read Chinese newspapers and watch CCTV program as well. Rest see above. 



Kenwen said:


> Who cares Hamburg has more fresh air and less congested, so does millions of chinese small towns and villages


Welll, not me


----------



## Rinchinlhumbe

little universe said:


> ATM (at the moment) :lol:
> 
> When i look at the current affairs, i do start worrying about the increasing irrational nationalism in China.


EXACTLY. 
Look, Kewen, thats what we are talking about. Relax and stop touting your country.



little universe said:


> I would like to see my home country eventually accept the Universal Value (maybe flavoured with some Chinese Cultural Identities) in the forseeable future, although some of my compatriots would not agree. :cheers:


Sounds good! Im with you


----------



## 7freedom7

Chrissib said:


> Well, I think you got some things wrong.
> 
> I am not Turkish and have never been to Turkey.
> 
> Sure about Malaysia? When I look at Google Maps, I can find a lot of rowhome developments like these: https://maps.google.de/maps?hl=de&ll=2.974499,101.657953&spn=0.0306,0.038409&t=k&z=15
> 
> You're right about Taiwan, but the huge urbanisation wave there has already happened, so their cities won't change that much as they switch to highrises now. Most people still live in small appartement houses.
> 
> In India there is construction at a considerable speed, but still, most homes are more or less independently built small appartement homes. In outer Mumbai and Delhi there are many highrises but they are built lower than in China, mostly around 7 to 10 stories high, whereas in China there are many highrises with 20 stories.


I got you're from Germany long before, actually I mean I'm somehow under impression that you are ein türkisch-deutscher Kerl from Deutschland as you show serious concern all the time over the Uighur Chinese here and there. 

Lets get back on topic tho, well I'm quite sure in Malaysia the mid-rise and high-rise apartment blocks there can overshadow what you see in its neighbor twin brother. Many Singaporeans are even pouring into its north neighbor to buy apartments nowadays. Even if there are many town house and single house developments under construction in Malaysia, they're just a part of urban developments, not whole of them.

For India, small apartment buildings you see on Google earth are highly likely old blocks built many years back in the cities. Due to the limited land and the resulting skyrocketing land values and plus the massive population explosion in the cities, no way is India building small apartment blocks for now in the big cities to meet the huge demand, that's a no brainer thing, or the pricey condos will choke off the vast majority of Indians given their income level. India is building as high apartment blocks and will ultimately build higher ones then elsewhere in the several years to come.


----------



## Chrissib

7freedom7 said:


> I got you're from Germany long before, actually I mean I'm somehow under impression that you are ein türkisch-deutscher Kerl from Deutschland as you show serious concern all the time over the Uighur Chinese here and there.
> 
> Lets get back on topic tho, well I'm quite sure in Malaysia the mid-rise and high-rise apartment blocks there can overshadow what you see in its neighbor twin brother. Many Singaporeans are even pouring into its north neighbor to buy apartments nowadays. Even if there are many town house and single house developments under construction in Malaysia, they're just a part of urban developments, not whole of them.
> 
> For India, small apartment buildings you see on Google earth are highly likely old blocks built many years back in the cities. Due to the limited land and the resulting skyrocketing land values and plus the massive population explosion in the cities, no way is India building small apartment blocks for now in the big cities to meet the huge demand, that's a no brainer thing, or the pricey condos will choke off the vast majority of Indians given their income level. India is building as high apartment blocks and will ultimately build higher ones then elsewhere in the several years to come.


I'm very interested in demographic issues, especially in how minorities develop in relation to the majority population and since China certainly will be the biggest economy in 10 years, of course I like to know whether the Han can keep their majority in those outlying areas or if they will be out-breed by the minorities, but that's the wrong thread to discuss that things. 

I am ethnically German and have no migration background. 

Yes. we'll certainly see an increase in highrise construction in India. 

But still, the amount of rowhome developments in KL look in Google Earth like they outnumber appartement construction.


----------



## 7freedom7

chornedsnorkack said:


> Out of the slightly over 50% of Chinese who already actually live in cities, how many are:
> 
> young and single illegal immigrants on low-paid jobs, who would be glad to get better salary, legal hukou of the city where they actually live, found a family and move from cramped hostels where they may now be living to big apartments of their own?
> 
> young born citizens of their cities who are now living in small homes with their families but who would also be glad to move to big apartments of their own?


Many and many.

A bit correction, Chinese nationals are legally allowed to freely migrate consistently throughout any cities in any provinces of China. Legal/illegal immigrants are terms meant for the foreigners. In the past, new immigrants without local Hukou could buy residential / business buildings anyway as they wanted until recently the government gives taps on real estate speculation and froth. 

It appears that the govt officials really learn lesson from U.S real estate bubble and engage themselves in the anti-speculation campaign to intentionally blow the froth in real estate during time period of the world economic recession which is the best timing to regulate the brutal and messy real estate market.


----------



## 7freedom7

Chrissib said:


> I'm very interested in demographic issues, especially in how minorities develop in relation to the majority population and since China certainly will be the biggest economy in 10 years, of course I like to know whether the Han can keep their majority in those outlying areas or if they will be out-breed by the minorities, but that's the wrong thread to discuss that things.
> 
> I am ethnically German and have no migration background.
> 
> Yes. we'll certainly see an increase in highrise construction in India.
> 
> But still, the amount of rowhome developments in KL look in Google Earth like they outnumber appartement construction.


Thanks Chrissib for your clarification. In a secular society (Xinjiang), the Uighur Chinese will finally fit in very well with other ethnicities and the genuine democracy will be established one day and will reach and spread throughout the whole Xinjiang as well. However if we push Islamic fundamentalism in Xinjiang as those East Turkestan terrorists wish, that will undoubtedly cause a catastrophe on all people living in the region and the democracy will be a lost clause forever.


----------



## yankeesfan1000

maldini said:


> Apple and BMW employ way more people than Coach in China. They are proving manufacturing is not moving away.
> 
> Coach manufacturing base is too small to prove anything.
> 
> This together with India's falling FDI indicate that manufacturing is not moving away from China to India, like you claimed.


My god man. So because two companies out of hundreds, if not thousands of companies that have manufacturing facilities in China are increasing production, therefore it negates the fact that manufacturing as a WHOLE is starting to leave? That's like saying, because Apple and GM stock were up today, that proves that all stocks were up today. You're taking a tiny sliver of information and attempting to use it to prop up a much more macro intensive argument that has no traction, that completely ignores the bigger picture. Take a step back and again look at the macro situation, here are some sources that took literally 20-30 seconds worth of Googling to find, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. 

Again, with the India and FDI thing, you're lack of basic reading comprehension never ceases to amaze. I never claimed that manufacturing is leaving China for India. What I said was that manufacturers who were leaving China were going to Southeast Asia and back to the US. And this is factually accurate as in one of the articles, (the last one #5) I posted the author questioned US manufacturers who were leaving China and said, where are you moving your manufacturing? They said, "...Vietnam (33.3%), the US (27.8%), Pakistan (22.2%) and Bangladesh (16.7%)."

If you want to have an honest discussion about this then fine. But first, read what I write. Second, I have provided actual statistical information which shows on a macro level that manufacturing is starting to leave China. I'm not saying it's a mass exodus and in 12 months there won't be any left, but it's a trend, and one that at this point is undeniable. If you however deny it, please provide sources of information and statistics to back your claim up, as I have done. Not tiny slivers of a few companies, but as a whole. If you prove me wrong, I'll be the first to admit it.

Edit: I'm adding an article to the list of sources, it's called: China Manufacturing PMI Softens Again, In Contraction For 6 Months. Clear enough?


----------



## maldini

Jay said:


> Going vertical is great when there's demand for it. It's also nice when people can afford the housing that's built.


The demand for new apartments is huge in China. Even with strict mortgage requirements, the prices have stayed buoyant. Every time there is a sale by the developers, the consumers just snap up all the available units within hours.


----------



## Jay

The why are there so many empty apartments throughout chinese cities? 

Because people can't afford them, that's why. So what good does the new housing do if the populace of a country doesn't have the money to live there?


----------



## maldini

yankeesfan1000 said:


> My god man. So because two companies out of hundreds, if not thousands of companies that have manufacturing facilities in China are increasing production, therefore it negates the fact that manufacturing as a WHOLE is starting to leave? That's like saying, because Apple and GM stock were up today, that proves that all stocks were up today. You're taking a tiny sliver of information and attempting to use it to prop up a much more macro intensive argument that has no traction, that completely ignores the bigger picture. Take a step back and again look at the macro situation, here are some sources that took literally 20-30 seconds worth of Googling to find, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
> 
> Again, with the India and FDI thing, you're lack of basic reading comprehension never ceases to amaze. I never claimed that manufacturing is leaving China for India. What I said was that manufacturers who were leaving China were going to Southeast Asia and back to the US. And this is factually accurate as in one of the articles, (the last one #5) I posted the author questioned US manufacturers who were leaving China and said, where are you moving your manufacturing? They said, "...Vietnam (33.3%), the US (27.8%), Pakistan (22.2%) and Bangladesh (16.7%)."
> 
> If you want to have an honest discussion about this then fine. But first, read what I write. Second, I have provided actual statistical information which shows on a macro level that manufacturing is starting to leave China. I'm not saying it's a mass exodus and in 12 months there won't be any left, but it's a trend, and one that at this point is undeniable. If you however deny it, please provide sources of information and statistics to back your claim up, as I have done. Not tiny slivers of a few companies, but as a whole. If you prove me wrong, I'll be the first to admit it.
> 
> Edit: I'm adding an article to the list of sources, it's called: China Manufacturing PMI Softens Again, In Contraction For 6 Months. Clear enough?


Apple is a $100 billion revenue company. Apple and their contractor Foxconn are bigger and hire more people than all your much smaller companies combined.

Manufacturers are not leaving China at all. Moving production from one place to another will not increase production.
But demand in China is growing rapidly. Using Apple as an example, the demand for Apple products in China is increasing rapidly. They need to increase production capacity. 

BMW, GM, Ford, Lenovo and Samsung are also increasing production in China. These are all big multi-billion $ companies. They hire way more people than all your thousands of very small companies combined.

Ford to Build Plant in China to Bolster Global Sales
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/b...d-new-plant-in-china-to-catch-up-with-gm.html

Lenovo investing big in China, plans $800 million for new products plant in China
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/23962...on_for_new_products_plant_in_china/index.html

Samsung to Spend $7 Billion on Mobile-Chip Plant in China
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...-7-billion-on-mobile-chip-plant-in-china.html

Apple Prepping New Production Line in China, Foxconn Partners to Invest $210M
http://www.mobilenapps.com/articles...repping-new-production-line-china-foxconn.htm

Foxconn to build new Apple production line in China
http://www.macworld.com.au/news/foxconn-to-build-new-apple-production-line-in-china-54901/

BMW to boost China investment, opens new plant
http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/18611438/bmw-to-boost-china-investment-opens-new-plant


----------



## 7freedom7

Jay said:


> The why are there so many empty apartments throughout chinese cities?
> 
> Because people can't afford them, that's why. So what good does the new housing do if the populace of a country doesn't have the money to live there?


People think there're many because of the sheer vast amount, but the vacancy rate is still quite low nationwide and considered to remain at safe level.

The empty buildings in the pics you posted are a measly fraction out of all and many of them appear to be ready for sales. Those empty apartments will be filled up over time as the local inhabitants want to extend their living space or the immigrants from countryside move in to improve their living standard, and investors are also likely to buy some of them (not that the entire real estate markets in the whole country are controlled, just so in some tie-1 cities like Beijing and Shanghai).


----------



## calaguyo

I think instead of building another city, China should have extended the development of their major cities. Just like Tianjin, it is like an Annex to Beijing. Shenzhen, Guangzhou are like the extension of HK. And most these areas are in the coast of China and are very convenient for logistics. 

Now, all the small towns in China wants to be classified as a city.


----------



## binhai

China is moving up the value chain from crappy to high end manufacturing. China's infrastructure is among the best in the world and there are tons of advantages for manufacturing besides low wages. Consumption will only increase too as we see the serious emergence of the Chinese middle class this decade.


----------



## VECTROTALENZIS

Chrissib said:


> HK and Singapore build commieblocks due to the lack of space. It's only China who seem to build commieblocks out of choice, although there would be enough space to built Malaysia-style rowhomes.
> 
> China is very unique in that case, I can only think of the Russians who build like that today.


China's urban planning is based on Singapore's. In the 1980's when China started to make reforms Deng Xiaoping sent a bunch of Chinese officials to Singapore to learn about everything about how the country is run like, economics, urban planning, efficiency etc. China view Singapore as the model for China, even today many Chinese go to Singapore for training. Singapore is also one of largest FDI source countries and many of the real estate is built by Singapore real estate companies.

Most of Singapore looks like this, see the similarities?


----------



## yankeesfan1000

maldini said:


> Apple is a $100 billion revenue company. Apple and their contractor Foxconn are bigger and hire more people than all your much smaller companies combined.
> 
> Manufacturers are not leaving China at all. Moving production from one place to another will not increase production.
> But demand in China is growing rapidly. Using Apple as an example, the demand for Apple products in China is increasing rapidly. They need to increase production capacity.
> 
> BMW, GM, Ford, Lenovo and Samsung are also increasing production in China. These are all big multi-billion $ companies. They hire way more people than all your thousands of very small companies combined.
> 
> Ford to Build Plant in China to Bolster Global Sales
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/b...d-new-plant-in-china-to-catch-up-with-gm.html
> 
> Lenovo investing big in China, plans $800 million for new products plant in China
> http://www.tweaktown.com/news/23962...on_for_new_products_plant_in_china/index.html
> 
> Samsung to Spend $7 Billion on Mobile-Chip Plant in China
> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...-7-billion-on-mobile-chip-plant-in-china.html
> 
> Apple Prepping New Production Line in China, Foxconn Partners to Invest $210M
> http://www.mobilenapps.com/articles...repping-new-production-line-china-foxconn.htm
> 
> Foxconn to build new Apple production line in China
> http://www.macworld.com.au/news/foxconn-to-build-new-apple-production-line-in-china-54901/
> 
> BMW to boost China investment, opens new plant
> http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/18611438/bmw-to-boost-china-investment-opens-new-plant


Revenue is not relevant to where a company locates its manufacturing. So I don't understand the connection you're trying to make. Company A could have 100X the revenue Company B has, but Company B could employ 100X as many people in Chinese based manufacturing than Company A. 

I'm not claiming that moving production from one place to another will increase production. What actual companies who own and operate these facilities are saying, is that wages are rising in China, so we can produce the same amount of goods in Pakistan or Bangladesh at a lower cost. 

And again, you have completely misunderstood what I said about small and large companies, your lack of reading comprehension is really making me consider just giving up. It's like having a discussion with a 6 year old. But what you have shown is that, yes there are some companies who are planning on expanding production in China. However this is a chart from HSBC. Look at the PMI, which measures manufacturing anything above 50 means its expanding anything below 50 means manufacturing is contracting...

Report is dated, 22 May 2012









Here's what Hongbin Qu, *Chief Economist, China & Co-Head of Asian Economic Research at HSBC* said: 

"Manufacturing activities softened again in May..."

Source.

Even in regard to Foxconn, they've had to increase wages 16-25% to stay in China!

Here's a report done by Accenture, a multi national consulting firm which looked at the effects of rising wages in China and how much companies are going to have to increase prices to maintain margins and they suggest moving production to South East Asia.

Here's another article from Rueters, China costs start to worry U.S. multinationals. 

Also, this is from one of your articles:

"In addition, [Foxconn] also opened a new plant in Brazil where the company produces iPads and iPhones that are sold in that country, and also adopted a strategy of decentralizing its Chinese production facilities..."

AND since you love FDI so much, China’s Foreign Direct Investment Declines A Fifth Month. So sure, you've shown that yes, there are companies who are investing in China. But again, I have shown that this is slowing. FDI is down, and PMI is down. How can you argue otherwise?


----------



## binhai

calaguyo said:


> I think instead of building another city, China should have extended the development of their major cities. Just like Tianjin, it is like an Annex to Beijing. Shenzhen, Guangzhou are like the extension of HK. And most these areas are in the coast of China and are very convenient for logistics.
> 
> Now, all the small towns in China wants to be classified as a city.


Educate yourself. Development is happening in all areas and all types, ranging from whole new cities, new districts, to expansions of existing cities, in every corner of the country. It's not one thing instead of another, it's all of them! That's just reality in the economic juggernaut known as China.


----------



## erbse

^ True point here.

Still, the Chinese government is obviously over- or underestimating certain areas, and thus there are misallocations throughout the country. Some things just won't develop in the way the government intended them to do - and China gets more and more of those. So there's some serious real estate bubble emerging in regions of the country, that any exterior observer recognizes nowadays. It's a matter of time when they're going to burst.

Though they might be less dramatic then expected by some.


----------



## maldini

yankeesfan1000 said:


> Revenue is not relevant to where a company locates its manufacturing. So I don't understand the connection you're trying to make. Company A could have 100X the revenue Company B has, but Company B could employ 100X as many people in Chinese based manufacturing than Company A.
> 
> I'm not claiming that moving production from one place to another will increase production. What actual companies who own and operate these facilities are saying, is that wages are rising in China, so we can produce the same amount of goods in Pakistan or Bangladesh at a lower cost.
> 
> And again, you have completely misunderstood what I said about small and large companies, your lack of reading comprehension is really making me consider just giving up. It's like having a discussion with a 6 year old. But what you have shown is that, yes there are some companies who are planning on expanding production in China. However this is a chart from HSBC. Look at the PMI, which measures manufacturing anything above 50 means its expanding anything below 50 means manufacturing is contracting...


You logic is totally flawed. The examples that I gave you are not only the biggest foreign companies in terms of revenue, but also the largest employers of workers. They hire more people than your thousands of small and insignificant foreign companies combined.

Would you please show us which other foreign company hire more than Apple and its contractors Foxconn in China?
It does not matter how many factories Foxconn set up elsewhere. As long as they are expanding big in China, then it is good. 
The same with BMW, Ford etc. They have factories all over the world, but they are still expanding big in China.

It is you who is obsessed with FDI to begin with. FDI is declining worldwide in may countries due to the bad worldwide economy. But the biggest Chinese companies themselves are still the biggest employers of Chinese workers and the biggest investors in China, since these Chinese conglomerates still have the cash and China still has the economic growth.

You obsession with FDI in China is misplaced here. China does not even depend on FDI anymore, as China is a continental economy that creates growth by itself and most of the growth will come from within itself.

So back to the topic of this thread. The rapid economic growth and urbanization in China will create even bigger demand for new residential units.


----------



## maldini

calaguyo said:


> I think instead of building another city, China should have extended the development of their major cities. Just like Tianjin, it is like an Annex to Beijing. Shenzhen, Guangzhou are like the extension of HK. And most these areas are in the coast of China and are very convenient for logistics.
> 
> Now, all the small towns in China wants to be classified as a city.


Have you seen the Tianjin related thread here? They are in fact extending urban Tianjin so that Beijing and Tianjin will be joined.

Have you seen the Shenzhen or Guangzhou thread? Shenzhen and Guangzhou each has more skyscrapers under construction than in Hong Kong.


----------



## Jay

Shenzhen is sure overbuilding, probably more than any other Chinese city. 

What I think may happen is China will be the next Dubai, but on a much larger scale. Look at all the supertall projects that are now just puddles of water after Dubai collapsed, that city has built too much, far far too much without demand and it's coming back to bite them in the ass. 

Obviously China is much more populated than Dubai but still, there clearly isn't demand for all of these buildings, it's just to show off, but people become over ambitous and over confident and end up causing grave problems in the end. 



> Those empty apartments will be filled up over time as the local inhabitants want to extend their living space or the immigrants from countryside move in to improve their living standard


You mean with the money they don't have or the money they don't have?


----------



## maldini

Jay said:


> Shenzhen is sure overbuilding, probably more than any other Chinese city.
> 
> What I think may happen is China will be the next Dubai, but on a much larger scale. Look at all the supertall projects that are now just puddles of water after Dubai collapsed, that city has built too much, far far too much without demand and it's coming back to bite them in the ass.
> 
> Obviously China is much more populated than Dubai but still, there clearly isn't demand for all of these buildings, it's just to show off, but people become over ambitous and over confident and end up causing grave problems in the end.
> 
> 
> 
> You mean with the money they don't have or the money they don't have?


In China, they have stringent mortgage requirements. Consumers need to pay 30% of the price as downpayment. The demand is so high that every time there is a sale, all the units are snapped up by the consumers.


----------



## 7freedom7

Jay said:


> You mean with the money they don't have or the money they don't have?


Explain me why you know they dont have money or no practicable means to raise money sufficient to make payment. I remember you're just a foreign English teacher in China thanks to your face instead of a senior housekeeper or financial advisor of their own.


----------



## calaguyo

BarbaricManchurian said:


> Educate yourself. Development is happening in all areas and all types, ranging from whole new cities, new districts, to expansions of existing cities, in every corner of the country. It's not one thing instead of another, it's all of them! That's just reality in the economic juggernaut known as China.


Read the title of the thread. It's about the ghost cities in China which is also a reality. They built houses and establishments in a some-far-far-away-land where no one wants to occupy. Whether they can or cannot afford is another story. 

I do not oppose the fact that development can be done anywhere. But there's these thing called "urban-planning", "feasibility study", "marketability", "law of supply and demand" which was seem ignored by your fellows.


----------



## maldini

calaguyo said:


> Read the title of the thread. It's about the ghost cities in China which is also a reality. They built houses and establishments in a some-far-far-away-land where no one wants to occupy. Whether they can or cannot afford is another story.
> 
> I do not oppose the fact that development can be done anywhere. But there's these thing called "urban-planning", "feasibility study", "marketability", "law of supply and demand" which was seem ignored by your fellows.


These developments in so-called "far away land " represent only an extremely small portion of the total number of units built around the country. As such, they are very insignificant and are not worthy to be discussed, as they do not influence the big scheme at all.


----------



## erbse

If you look at the scale of these ghost areas - of course it's worth to discuss! Don't you have any kind of economical and ecological sensibility?  What's wrong with all those materialist people nowadays?


----------



## binhai

maldini said:


> Have you seen the Tianjin related thread here? They are in fact extending urban Tianjin so that Beijing and Tianjin will be joined.
> 
> Have you seen the Shenzhen or Guangzhou thread? Shenzhen and Guangzhou each has more skyscrapers under construction than in Hong Kong.


Actually they are expanding Tianjin towards the sea, there is little development between Tianjin and Beijing. Shenzhen and Guangzhou are already basically merged though, it's a continuous urban sprawl so what is happening now is densification.


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## Yuri S Andrade

I wonder what will happen when China population starts shrinking in ten years (maybe less) from now. It will be scary.


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## yankeesfan1000

maldini said:


> You logic is totally flawed. The examples that I gave you are not only the biggest foreign companies in terms of revenue, but also the largest employers of workers. They hire more people than your thousands of small and insignificant foreign companies combined.
> 
> Would you please show us which other foreign company hire more than Apple and its contractors Foxconn in China?
> It does not matter how many factories Foxconn set up elsewhere. As long as they are expanding big in China, then it is good.
> The same with BMW, Ford etc. They have factories all over the world, but they are still expanding big in China.
> 
> It is you who is obsessed with FDI to begin with. FDI is declining worldwide in may countries due to the bad worldwide economy. But the biggest Chinese companies themselves are still the biggest employers of Chinese workers and the biggest investors in China, since these Chinese conglomerates still have the cash and China still has the economic growth.
> 
> You obsession with FDI in China is misplaced here. China does not even depend on FDI anymore, as China is a continental economy that creates growth by itself and most of the growth will come from within itself.
> 
> So back to the topic of this thread. The rapid economic growth and urbanization in China will create even bigger demand for new residential units.


My logic is flawed? Good god. I'll go paragraph by paragraph to make it easy.

First paragraph, if you're gonna call me out on sources, show me some sources that prove Apple and Foxconn are the largest manufacturing employers in China, otherwise I'm going to assume your making that up. All you showed was that those companies are expanding in China, not that they are the largest employers, two obviously different things. Plus, China's manufacturing sector is north of 110 million workers, source (see what I did there, I provided a source), so you need to keep that number in mind when reading these articles saying that Apple or BMW will open a plant and employee X number of people. 

Second, I can't show you what other foreign companies employ more people in China, because you haven't shown that Apple and Foxconn are the top employers! You're the one claiming that they're China's top manufacturing employers, in case you forgot where, your second sentence in the first paragraph, "The examples that I gave you are not only the biggest foreign companies in terms of revenue, but also the largest employers of workers..." 

Lastly, as I've shown with actual statistics and data, a majority of China's economic growth has actually come from the central's government spending on fixed assets, see more sources!!

I also couldn't help but notice that you COMPLETELY glossed over the HSBC report, that shows, again, with actual statistics and data from an incredibly reputable source, that the manufacturing sector in China is slowing. There are some companies, as you've shown, that are expanding in China, but as a whole, from a macroeconomic stand point, manufacturing is slowing. It's just not debatable, unless you think you know better than HSBC's Chief and Co-Head of Asian Economic Research and PMI. I mean, PMI is below 50, that by definition means that manufacturing is in contraction. Do you think PMI is a flawed measurement system, or that HSBC got it wrong? 

But again, this a MACROECONOMIC issue. Much larger than one company, or two, or 10. This is a sector that employs well over 100M people. Keep that in mind. 

In hindsight though, I'm actually not surprised you glossed over the HSBC article because it supports my point, and opposes your argument. So I guess because it has actual facts and stuff like data in it, it'd be best to just ignore it.


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## oliver999

china is big, but usable lands are very few, even fewer than india. we have a farmland redline.


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## Jay

oliver999 said:


> china is big, but usable lands are very few, even fewer than india. we have a farmland redline.


How is that true? China is over 3 times bigger than India landwise and has about the same population. 

Plus if usable land is so scarce, why build cities where no one can afford to live? You need to start small then go big, you can't just build a city for millions of people in a month, it just doesn't work that way. Look what happened to Dubai, I have no reason to think China is not heading in the same direction.


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## Sean in New Orleans

Trouble lies ahead....capitalism is what really satisfies supply and demand. This communistic approach inevitably is going to lead to unrest. Many people in the end will end up with no money, because this type of economy does not thrive on supply and demand and it is going to end up a bombshell when the realities are realized. And at this rate....it won't be too long...perhaps in the next decade.


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## maldini

China is doing just fine. Some people have been predicting the crumbling of the Chinese economy. But it turns out their own countries are on the edge of bankruptcy.


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## maldini

oliver999 said:


> china is big, but usable lands are very few, even fewer than india. we have a farmland redline.


You are right. In China, there are lots of deserts, plateaus, and mountainous regions.


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## Chrissib

maldini said:


> China is doing just fine. Some people have been predicting the crumbling of the Chinese economy. But it turns out their own countries are on the edge of bankruptcy.


Really doing fine? The economic slowdown everyone is waiting for has already happened in cities like Shanghai and Beijing. With a GDP growth of 8-9% and a population growth of 3-4% they only manage to increase per capita GDP by 5% a year.


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## megacity30

Chrissib said:


> Really doing fine? The *economic slowdown everyone is waiting for* has already happened in cities like Shanghai and Beijing. With a GDP growth of 8-9% and a population growth of 3-4% they only manage to increase per capita GDP by 5% a year.


Why should everyone be waiting for an economic slowdown?

Shouldn't everyone be waiting for sustained economic growth?

Very few countries in the world manage to increase per capita GDP by 5% every year; I think that's remarkable.


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## Chrissib

megacity30 said:


> Why should everyone be waiting for an economic slowdown?
> 
> Shouldn't everyone be waiting for sustained economic growth?
> 
> Very few countries in the world manage to increase per capita GDP by 5% every year; I think that's remarkable.


Because China can't continue growing at 10% for a long time. The slowdown has to come, so of course everyone is waiting for it (that doesn't mean that everyone is wanting it).


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## Kenwen

calaguyo said:


> Read the title of the thread. It's about the ghost cities in China which is also a reality. They built houses and establishments in a some-far-far-away-land where no one wants to occupy. Whether they can or cannot afford is another story.
> 
> I do not oppose the fact that development can be done anywhere. But there's these thing called "urban-planning", "feasibility study", "marketability", "law of supply and demand" which was seem ignored by your fellows.


Lol, from your ignorant statement, I can tell, u are one of those people that think China is like North Korea, where everything are built regardless of supply and demand.
The fact is that China is one of the most capitalist country in the world, the government didn't build a single house for people until last year cheap housing scheme. The Chinese businessmen are doing a very very good job at increasing their earning, they are too powerful for some foreigners like u to understand, if they don't build things according to supply and demand crap which high school people knows, they wouldn't have that much of fortune in the first place, all these real estate developers will be killed by their boards. Basically, building a few dozens residential towers in one projects are quite common, these so called ghost town are some larger examples. They are not ready for sales of course they look empty. But of course,there are some unfortunate developers that made wrong decisions and lost money, business has risks, there won't be a country where 100% real estate developers makes money.
I'm wondering if you are certain that house price in China is too high for many people, why it is so high?
I notice that u keep talking about capitalist basic knowledge of supply and demand, tell me if there are too much supply, how the hell the equilibrium reach such high price, usually over supply will drives price down. If there isn't that much of demand, price will never get high.

You are just one of the ignorant that thought all Chinese are commie that has no knowledge of supply and demand. Surely, "urban-planning", "feasibility study", "marketability", "law of supply and demand" which was seem ignored by us Chinese fellows, and your phillpino are so much more successful than our Chinese businessmen.


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## VECTROTALENZIS

Chrissib said:


> Really doing fine? The economic slowdown everyone is waiting for has already happened in cities like Shanghai and Beijing. With a GDP growth of 8-9% and a population growth of 3-4% they only manage to increase per capita GDP by 5% a year.


Can you show me a source were it says that the population increases 3-4%? Because the latest UN statistics give me a a population growth of 0.48%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate


This is directly from the International monetary fund.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_future_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

GDP per capita (PPP) past and future:

With GDP per capita growth

In current international dollars

*2007	5,548
2008	6,185 11.5 growth
2009	6,792 9.8% growth
2010	7,550 11.2% growth
2011	8,382 11.0% growth

future projections

2012	9,143 9.1% growth
2013	10,047 9.9% growth
2014	11,030 9.8% growth
2015	12,121 9.9% growth
2016	13,305 9.8% growth
2017 14,640 10.0% growth*


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## Kenwen

Chrissib said:


> Because China can't continue growing at 10% for a long time. The slowdown has to come, so of course everyone is waiting for it (that doesn't mean that everyone is wanting it).


You are right on this one, I think once a country has reach another development phase, their growth will get slower but only for the better. Japan, S.K and Taiwan all had a period of double digit growth, but their growth got lower since they became more develop, no country can escape that trend. Lower growth well suit the transformation of the Chinese economy, China is getting the rip off those inefficient, high pollution industry.


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## Kenwen

Jay said:


> How is that true? China is over 3 times bigger than India landwise and has about the same population.
> 
> Plus if usable land is so scarce, why build cities where no one can afford to live? You need to start small then go big, you can't just build a city for millions of people in a month, it just doesn't work that way. Look what happened to Dubai, I have no reason to think China is not heading in the same direction.


China has fewer arable land than India, not land mass. The whole of India is almost a huge piece of flat plain land, whereas China has Gobi desert, Tibetan plateau, hilly southern China. That's why the Chinese govt are always praising themselves for "using 7% of worlds farmland to produce 22% of world's food to feed 19% of the world's pop( Chinese)", that's one of their propaganda that being heard quite often in our media. The govt had set a red line on arable land that can not be breach for any other purpose than farming and herds grazing. As result we can self sustain on any kind of food, like grain and meat, our food price is extremely low compare to Japan and S.K whom protect their local farmers interest to set quota and high tariff for imported food which in terms drive their food price up, the reason is that they can not produce enough food for themselves.
With enough amount of well preserve farmland, we Chinese enjoy low food price( All range of fruits, meats and grain.) more average calories intake compare to Japan and S.K. South Korean are famous being eating meat crazily in China, they don't know meat can be so cheap with such quantity, whereas in their country, they bought meat as presents, because they are too pricey. And self sustain of food is crucial to become a super power, food can be use as weapon if one country can not sustain themselves of it, and it can use to dump hungry countries to make profit, like what EU do to Africa.


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## Kenwen

Sorry to bother forumers loads and loads of my lil knowledge.


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## Chrissib

VECTROTALENZIS said:


> Can you show me a source were it says that the population increases 3-4%? Because the latest UN statistics give me a a population growth of 0.48%.




No, the UN says 3.28% for Shanghai and 3.86% for Beijing in 2011. Since both cities had a GDP growth of 8% in 2011, you get per capita growth of around 4.7% for Shanghai and 4.2% for Beijing.

Source for population data: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/index.html

And for provincial growth: http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2012/01/27/chinas-provincial-gdp-figures-in-2011.html


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## binhai

Well yeah, it's obvious that cities like Beijing and shanghai are growing slower than cities like wuhan, Tianjin, and chongqing. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out.


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## VECTROTALENZIS

Chrissib said:


> No, the UN says 3.28% for Shanghai and 3.86% for Beijing in 2011. Since both cities had a GDP growth of 8% in 2011, you get per capita growth of around 4.7% for Shanghai and 4.2% for Beijing.
> 
> Source for population data: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/index.html
> 
> And for provincial growth: http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2012/01/27/chinas-provincial-gdp-figures-in-2011.html


At their level of GDP per capita around 5% GDP per capita growth is still very good.

But the rest of the provinces still grows very fast, the richest provinces Zhejiang and Jiangsu all have a GDP per capita growth of around 9-10%.



















Source: http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2012/01/27/chinas-provincial-gdp-figures-in-2011.html


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## z0rg

Chrissib said:


> No, the UN says 3.28% for Shanghai and 3.86% for Beijing in 2011. Since both cities had a GDP growth of 8% in 2011, you get per capita growth of around 4.7% for Shanghai and 4.2% for Beijing.
> 
> Source for population data: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/index.html
> 
> And for provincial growth: http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2012/01/27/chinas-provincial-gdp-figures-in-2011.html


Shanghai GDP grew from 1.68 trillion yuan in 2010 to 1.92 trillion yuan in 2011. That makes 14.3% growth. 
Beijing GDP jumped from 1.37 trillion to 1.60, or +16.8% growth (surpassing Hong Kong GDP for the first time in modern history).

Actually China (Mainland) actual growth rate is around 14-18%. You are using headline growth rates, not actual growth rates. Check IMF databases, you'll learn that China's GDP is doubling every 6 years. Even faster on yuan appreciation. 

Of course the big cities will slow dramatically in the coming years. Otherwise, Shanghai GDP per capita would catch up with Germany within 12 years, that would be too prodigious even for ever-booming China.

The point is, all those growth rates quoted by the media are meaningless if you want to measure a mid-long term evolution. Check the actual figures and you'll see that the actual growth rate if much higher. Another example: Guangdong province GDP topped 1 trillion yuan in 2001, and it was 5.3 trillion in 2011. In case Guangdong managed to keep the same actual growth rate for another 10 years its total GDP would be similar to Germany by 2021.


----------



## maldini

Chrissib said:


> Really doing fine? The economic slowdown everyone is waiting for has already happened in cities like Shanghai and Beijing. With a GDP growth of 8-9% and a population growth of 3-4% they only manage to increase per capita GDP by 5% a year.


You should take a look at your own country, which is growing much slower.


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## maldini

Kenwen said:


> You are right on this one, I think once a country has reach another development phase, their growth will get slower but only for the better. Japan, S.K and Taiwan all had a period of double digit growth, but their growth got lower since they became more develop, no country can escape that trend. Lower growth well suit the transformation of the Chinese economy, China is getting the rip off those inefficient, high pollution industry.


You are totally right. But for some bashers, they think slower growth in China is unique, when their own countries are near the brink of bankruptcy.

China is certainly moving up the technology ladder, with a rapidly developing service sector.


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## erbse

Stop comparing China to fully developed countries, please.



maldini said:


> You should take a look at your own country, which is growing much slower.


Germany is in the ranks of being one of the highest developed nations in the world.
Additionally, it has the biggest growth in the Euro zone and is the main drive of a possible recovery in Europe.

Your statement thus doesn't make a lot of sense. 

China still has to go quite some path to achieve that. And a major downturn in the following years could mean China fails to achieve such a state anytime soon. It could face the same fate as some Latin American countries (mainly Brazil and Argentina) with their major downturns in the 70s - which prevented them from turning into developed states, until today.


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## idoke

Everyone who lives in China and can't see the over-building needs to go to the new districts outside the big cities and see how many flats are empty even 5 years after they got completed.

The statistics also support this.
Home starts in China stand on 2 billion sqm of residential real-estate. That means that China is building 1.5 sqm per person every year!
The problem is that the average Chinese already has 34 sqm of residential space, which is not only more than any other developing country, but even more than many developed countries. If they continue with the current speed, in less than 5 years the average Chinese will live in a bigger home than the average German.

Obviously, this speed of building is unsustainable.

Yes, there is a big urbanization process, but the speed is decreasing very fast. 10 years ago cities were growing by 20 million people every year. Now it is down to 13 million, and it will continue drooping. Just look at the population pyramid of China and you will see that the pool of population under 20 years old is much small than the one in 20-30 or 30-40 years old.

Now there are many people that still live in slams while other have 2 or 3 or more flats. This will change as soon as the "investor" (which actually are speculators) will realize that having a flat and keeping it empty doesn't provide a good Return On Invested Capital.

So the current build-up is unsustainable and actually already starts to cool. That is the main reason China is cooling (and not because of Spain or what ever the Chinese leaders try to blame). 
Investment in fixed assets account for 70% of China's GDP, so as this part of the economy starts slowing down, China won't be able to grow 8% probably it won't be able to grow above 4% in the next few years. There is also a big risk for financial crisis in the next 1-2 years - similar to the one SE Asia had 15 years ago.

All my data is from the Chinese bureau of statistics
http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2011/indexeh.htm


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## Huhu

^^ You're assuming that this housing stock is created out of thin air, ie. new housing on virgin land. However, Chinese development companies also have a penchant for demolition. Doesn't matter if it's hundreds of years old, if it's in the way, it's gone. They've destroyed cities with hundreds of thousands of people to make way for a dam for example.

I'm not saying that China doesn't have a housing bubble issue, clearly it does, as it's own government recognizes. However this "ghost city" thing overplays the issue as if all of China is one deserted overbuilt ghost town.


Chrissib said:


> No, the UN says 3.28% for Shanghai and 3.86% for Beijing in 2011. Since both cities had a GDP growth of 8% in 2011, you get per capita growth of around 4.7% for Shanghai and 4.2% for Beijing.
> 
> Source for population data: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/index.html
> 
> And for provincial growth: http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2012/01/27/chinas-provincial-gdp-figures-in-2011.html


Shanghai's nominal GDP per capita is around 12,000 USD. 8% growth, or 4.7% factoring in population growth, is reasonable in my opinion for an area that should be classified as "NIC" if it were an independent country.


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## Ulpia-Serdica

hmmwv said:


> It's funny that Jay only started it years after it was first reported in the media, slow news day? People have predicted China's fall for over 10 years now, it's getting a little boring now.


I don't think that anyone is saying that there will be a fall of China, or at least not me, simply a massive assets correction as it was the case with Japan.


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## VECTROTALENZIS

Ulpia-Serdica said:


> I don't think that anyone is saying that there will be a fall of China


What? Haven't you read newspapers or seen the news? Almost everybody predicts that China will fall within a year. 
Also among normal people, everybody really wants the worst to happen for China and dreams about the fall of China.

Gordon Chang is one the front figures and has written two books about the coming collaps of China. His first book "The Coming Collapse of China" came out in 2001 and predicted that China would fall in 2006. He then predicted the fall to be in 2011. 
The second book came out recently and is named "The Coming Collapse of China: 2012 Edition" and the new date when China will fall is 2012.

Will we see a future "The Coming Collapse of China: 2022 Edition" or perhaps a "The Coming Collapse of China: 2032 Edition"? :lol:


----------



## Ulpia-Serdica

VECTROTALENZIS said:


> What? Haven't you read newspapers or seen the news? Almost everybody predicts that China will fall within a year.
> Also among normal people, everybody really wants the worst to happen for China and dreams about the fall of China.
> 
> Gordon Chang is one the front figures and has written two books about the coming collaps of China. His first book "The Coming Collapse of China" came out in 2001 and predicted that China would fall in 2006. He then predicted the fall to be in 2011.
> The second book came out recently and is named "The Coming Collapse of China: 2012 Edition" and the new date when China will fall is 2012.
> 
> Will we see a future "The Coming Collapse of China: 2022 Edition" or perhaps a "The Coming Collapse of China: 2032 Edition"? :lol:


Well in terms of predictions, it is true that most of it is simply sensationalism and that indeed the general people do not understand the consequences of a fall of China. I mean, people were talking about the Japanese asset bubble since the beginning of the 1980s, there is no doubt that their predictions took 10 years, but it still happened.

As I said there is no denying that a lot of the info in the media is over-hyped such as most of Gordon Chang's work, but at the same to blindly say that there was no over-investment in fixed assets in China would be equally erroneous.


----------



## null

VECTROTALENZIS said:


> What? Haven't you read newspapers or seen the news? Almost everybody predicts that China will fall within a year.
> Also among normal people, everybody really wants the worst to happen for China and dreams about the fall of China.
> 
> Gordon Chang is one the front figures and has written two books about the coming collaps of China. His first book "The Coming Collapse of China" came out in 2001 and predicted that China would fall in 2006. He then predicted the fall to be in 2011.
> The second book came out recently and is named "The Coming Collapse of China: 2012 Edition" and the new date when China will fall is 2012.
> 
> Will we see a future "The Coming Collapse of China: 2022 Edition" or perhaps a "The Coming Collapse of China: 2032 Edition"? :lol:


Nice way of making money, I have to say.


----------



## Restless

*Investment*
*Prudence without a purpose
Misinvestment is a bigger problem than overinvestment*
May 26th 2012 | from the print edition
http://www.economist.com/node/21555761










GENGHIS KHAN SQUARE in Kangbashi, a new city in the northern province of Inner Mongolia, is as big as Tiananmen Square in Beijing. But unlike Tiananmen Square, it has only one woman to sweep it. It takes her six hours, she says, though longer after the sandstorms that sweep in from the Gobi desert. Kangbashi, or “new Ordos”, as it is known, is easy to clean because it is all but empty. China’s most famous “ghost city”, it has attracted a lot of journalists eager to illustrate China’s overinvestment, but not many residents.

Ordos was one of the prime exhibits in an infamous presentation by Jim Chanos, a well-known short-seller, at the London School of Economics in January 2010. Mr Chanos argued that China’s growth was predicated on an unsustainable mobilisation of capital—investment that provides only for further investment. China, he quipped, was “Dubai times 1,000”.

His tongue-in-cheek reference to the bling-swept, debt-drenched emirate caused a stir. But not everywhere in China shrinks from the comparison. One property development that actively courts it is Phoenix Island, off the coast of tropical Sanya, China’s southernmost city. It is a largely man-made islet, much like Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah. Its centrepiece will be a curvaceous seven-star hotel, rather like Dubai’s Burj Al Arab, only shaped like a wishbone not a sail. The five pod-like buildings already up resemble the unopened buds of some strange flower. Coated in light-emitting diodes, they erupt into a lightshow at night, featuring adverts for Chanel and Louis Vuitton.

After a visit to Ordos or Sanya, it is tempting to agree with Mr Chanos that China has overinvested from its northern steppe to its southern shores. But what exactly does it mean for a country to “overinvest”? One clear sign would be investment that was running well ahead of saving, requiring heavy foreign borrowing and buying. The result could be a currency crisis, like the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. Some veterans of that episode worry about China’s reckless investment in tasteless property. But although China invests more of its GDP than those crisis-struck economies ever did, it also saves far more. It is a net exporter of capital, as its controversial current-account surplus attests. Indeed, for every critic bashing China for reckless investment spending there is another accusing it of depressing world demand through excessive thrift. China is in the odd position of being cast as both miser and wanton.

Even an extravagance like Kangbashi is best understood as an attempt to soak up saving. The Ordos prefecture, to which it belongs, is home to a sixth of China’s coal reserves and a third of its natural gas (not to mention its rare earths and soft goat’s wool). According to Ting Lu of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Kangbashi is an attempt to prevent Ordos’s commodity earnings from disappearing to other parts of the country.

China as a whole saved an extraordinary 51% of its GDP last year. Until China’s investment rate exceeds that share, there is no cause for concern, says Qu Hongbin of HSBC. Anything China fails to invest at home must be invested overseas. “The most wasteful investment China now has is US Treasuries,” he adds.

When talking about thrift, economists sometimes draw on a parable of prudence written three centuries ago by Daniel Defoe. In that novel the resourceful Robinson Crusoe, shipwrecked on a remote island, saves and replants four quarts of barley. The reward for his thrift is a harvest of 80 quarts, a return of 1,900%.

*Castaway capital*

Investment is made out of saving, which requires consumption to be deferred. The returns to investment must be set against the disadvantage of having to wait. In Robinson Crusoe, the saving and the investing are both done by the same Englishman, alone on his island. In a more complicated economy, households must save so that entrepreneurs can invest. In most economies their saving is voluntary, but China has found ways of imposing the patience its high investment rate requires.

Michael Pettis of Guanghua School of Management at Peking University argues that the Chinese government suppresses consumption in favour of producers, many of them state-owned. It keeps the currency undervalued, which makes imports expensive and exports cheap, thereby discouraging the consumption of foreign goods and encouraging production for foreign customers. It caps interest rates on bank deposits, depriving households of interest income and transferring it to corporate borrowers. And because some of China’s markets remain largely sheltered from competition, a few incumbent firms can extract high prices and reinvest the profits. The government has, in effect, confiscated quarts of barley from the people who might want to eat them, making them available as seedcorn instead.

What has China got in return? Investment, unlike consumption, is cumulative; it leaves behind a stock of machinery, buildings and infrastructure. If China’s capital stock were already too big for its needs, further thrift would indeed be pointless. In fact, though, the country’s overall capital stock is still small relative to its population and medium-sized relative to its economy. In 2010, its capital stock per person was only 7% of America’s (converted at market exchange rates), according to Andrew Batson and Janet Zhang of GK Dragonomics, a consultancy in Beijing. Even measured at purchasing-power parity, China has only about a fifth of America’s capital stock per person, depending on how its PPP rate is calculated.









Boom, boom

China needs to “produce lots more of almost everything”, argues Scott Sumner of Bentley University, even if it does not produce “everything in the right order”. Its furious homebuilding, for example, has unnerved the government and cast a shadow over its banks, which worry about defaults on property loans. But it still needs more places for people to live. In 2010 it had 140m-150m urban homes, according to Rosealea Yao of GK Dragonomics, 85m short of the number of urban households. About three-quarters of China’s migrant workers are squeezed into rented housing or dormitories provided by their employer.

Nor is China’s capital stock conspicuously large relative to the size of its economy. It amounted to about 2.5 times China’s GDP in 2008, according to the APO. That was the same as America’s figure and much lower than Japan’s. Thanks to China’s stimulus-driven investment spree, the ratio increased to 2.9 in 2010, but that still does not look wildly out of line.

*Malinvestors of great wealth*

In Defoe’s tale, Robinson Crusoe spends five months making a canoe for himself, felling a cedar-tree, paring away its branches and chiselling out its innards. Only after this “inexpressible labour” does he find that the canoe is too heavy to be pushed the 100 yards to the shore. That is not an example of overinvestment (Crusoe did need a canoe), but “malinvestment”. Crusoe devoted his energy to the wrong enterprise in the wrong place.

It is surprisingly hard to show that China has overinvested, but easier to show that it has invested unwisely. Of China’s misguided canoe-builders, two are worth singling out: its local governments (see article) and its state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

China’s SOEs endured a dramatic downsizing and restructuring in the 1990s. Thousands of them were allowed to go bankrupt, yet those that survived this cull remain a prominent feature of Chinese capitalism. Even in the retail, wholesale and restaurant businesses there are over 20,000 of them, according to Zhang Wenkui of China’s Development Research Centre.

SOEs are responsible for about 35% of the fixed-asset investments made by Chinese firms. They can invest so much because they have become immensely profitable. The 120 or so big enterprises owned by the central government last year earned net profits of 917 billion yuan ($142 billion), according to their supervisor, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC). It cites their profitability as evidence of their efficiency. But even now, returns on equity among SOEs are substantially lower than among private firms. Nor do SOEs really “earn” their returns. The markets they occupy tend to be uncompetitive, as the OECD has shown, and their inputs of land, energy and credit are artificially cheap. Researchers at Unirule, a Beijing think-tank, have shown that the SOEs’ profits from 2001 to 2008 would have turned into big losses had they paid the market rate for their loans and land.

Even if the SOEs deserved their large profits, they would not be able to reinvest them if they paid proper dividends to their shareholders, principally the state. Since a 2007 reform, dividends have increased to 5-15% of profits, depending on the industry. But in other countries state enterprises typically pay out half, according to the World Bank. Moreover, SOE dividends are not handed over to the finance ministry to spend as it sees fit but paid into a special budget reserved for financing state enterprises. SOE dividends, in other words, are divided among SOEs.

*The wrong sort of investment*

Loren Brandt and Zhu Xiaodong of the University of Toronto argue that China’s worst imbalance is not between investment and consumption but between SOE investment and private investment. According to their calculations, if state capitalists had not enjoyed privileged access to capital, China could have achieved the same growth between 1978 and 2007 with an investment rate of only 21% of GDP, about half its actual rate. A similar conclusion was reached by David Dollar, now at America’s Treasury, and Shang-Jin Wei of Columbia Business School. They reckon that two-thirds of the capital employed by the SOEs should have been invested by private firms instead. Karl Marx made his case for collective ownership of the means of production in “Das Kapital”. Messrs Dollar and Wei called their riposte “Das (Wasted) Kapital”.

Perhaps the best that can be said of China’s SOEs is that they give the country’s ruling party a direct stake in the economy’s prosperity. Li-Wen Lin and Curtis Milhaupt of Columbia University argue that the networks linking the party to the SOEs, and the SOEs to each other, help to forge an “encompassing” coalition, a concept they draw from Mancur Olson, a political scientist. The members of such a coalition “own so much of the society that they have an important incentive to be actively concerned about how productive it is”. China’s rulers not only own large swathes of industry, they have also installed their sons and daughters in senior positions at the big firms.

The SOEs provide some reassurance that the government will remain committed to economic growth, according to Mr Milhaupt and another co-author, Ronald Gilson. The party officials embedded in them are like “hostages” to economic fortune, “the children of the monarch placed in the hands of those who need to rely upon the monarch”. That gives private entrepreneurs confidence, because the growth thus guaranteed will eventually benefit them as well—although they will have to work harder for their rewards.

What are the implications of China’s malinvestment for its economic progress? At its worst, China’s growth model adds insult to injury. It suppresses consumption and forces saving, then misinvests the proceeds in speculative assets or excess capacity. It is as if Crusoe were forced to scatter more than half his barley on the soil, then leave part of the harvest to rot.

The rot may not become apparent at once. Goods for which there is no demand at home can be sold abroad. And surplus plant and machinery can be kept busy making capital goods for another round of investment that will only add to the problem. But when the building dust settles, a number of consequences become clear. First, consumption is lower than it could be, because of the extra saving. GDP, properly measured, is also lower than it appears, because so much of it is investment, and some of that investment is ultimately valueless. It follows that the capital stock, properly measured, is also smaller than it seems, because a lot of it is rotten. That would make for a very different kind of island parable, a tale of needless austerity and squandered effort.

Fortunately there is another side to China’s story. It has not only accumulated physical capital but also acquired more know-how, better technology and cleverer techniques. That is why foreign multinationals in the country rely on local suppliers—and also why they fear local rivals. A Chinese motorbike-maker studied by John Strauss of the University of Southern California and his co-authors started out producing the metal casings for exhaust pipes. Then it learnt how to make the whole pipe. Next it mastered the pistons. Eventually it made the entire bike.

China “bears” like Mr Chanos sometimes neglect this side of the country’s progress. In his 2010 presentation he compared China to the Soviet Union, another empire in the east that enjoyed a stretch of beguiling economic growth. Like the Soviet command economy, China is good at marshalling inputs of capital and labour, he pointed out, but China has failed to generate growth in output per input, just as the Soviet Union failed before it. Yet this analogy with the Soviet Union is preposterous.

Economists refer to a rise in output per input of capital and labour as a gain in “total factor productivity”. Such gains have many sources. One textile boss got 20% more out of his seamstresses by playing background music in his factory, recalls Arnold Harberger of the University of California at Los Angeles. The striking thing about the growth in China’s total factor productivity is not its absence but its speed: the fastest in the world over the past decade. Between 2000 and 2008 it contributed 43% of the country’s economic growth, according to the APO. That is just as big a contribution as the brute accumulation of capital, which accounted for 44% (excluding information technology). Thus even if some of China’s recent investment has in fact been wasted, China’s progress cannot be written off.


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## skyridgeline

Cheap fix?


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## binhai

^^They're building a huge skyscraper complex on that site: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=900722


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## Los Earth

Just wondering what is China's point of building tens of supertalls?
Is it to prepare for the mass moving's to cities?
Is there a shortage of office space, housing etc...?
Or is it wasting money just to show off the the world, when in reality some of these buildings won't be needed at all?


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## cfredo

^^
Why should a private company like CapitaLand (developer of the Chongqing Chaotianmen project above) waste money to show off China to the world? It isn't even a Chinese company. 
Most of the supertalls in China are private funded and those private developers aren't interested in showing the rest of the world how great China is. Their only interest is money and apparently they think that they will be able to make money out of those supertalls.
"China" itself isn't building those supertalls...it's not like some guys from the Communist Party are sitting in a room and say: "Oh, let's build a 600m tower here and a 400m one over there!"


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## little universe

^^

Yeah, the developer CapitaLand is a Singaporean Company.

Maybe they are going to build this project to show off Singapore which is thousands of miles away or promote the tourism in Singapore??? :nuts: :lol:

By saying that, welcome the European investors building supertalls in China in order to remind us Chinese the existence of the debt-ridden Europe in this ever-changing World. :cheers:


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## Ulpia-Serdica

little universe said:


> ^^
> 
> Yeah, the developer CapitaLand is a Singaporean Company.
> 
> Maybe they are going to build this project to show off Singapore which is thousands of miles away or promote the tourism in Singapore??? :nuts: :lol:
> 
> By saying that, welcome the European investors building supertalls in China in order to remind us Chinese the existence of the debt-ridden Europe in this ever-changing World. :cheers:


European investors down build super talls. They build factories where Chinese people can have stable jobs and represent over 1/3 of FDI flows in China.


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## Ulpia-Serdica

> *China bubble in 'danger zone' warns Bank of Japan*
> 
> China risks a repeat of Japan’s boom-bust disaster 20 years ago as exorbitant property prices combine with a demographic tipping point, a top Japanese official has warned.
> 
> “China is now entering the 'danger zone’,” said Kiyohiko Nishimura, the Bank of Japan’s deputy-governor and an expert on asset booms.
> 
> The surge in Chinese home prices and loan growth over the past five years has surpassed extremes seen in Japan before the Nikkei bubble popped in 1990. Construction reached 12pc of GDP in China last year; it peaked in Japan at 10pc.
> 
> Mr Nishimura said credit and housing booms can remain “benign” so long as the workforce is young and growing. They turn “malign” once the ratio of working age people to dependents rolls over as it did in Japan.
> 
> China’s ratio will peak at around 2.7 over the next couple of years as the aging crunch arrives. It will then go into a sharp descent, compounded by the delayed effects of the one-child policy.
> 
> “Not every bubble-bust episode leads to a financial crisis. However, if a demographic change, a property price bubble and a steep increase in loans coincide, then a financial crisis seems more likely,” he said in Sydney at a conference on asset booms.
> 
> Japanese stocks have fallen by 75pc and Tokyo land prices by 80pc since the economy first began to slide into a deflationary trap two decades ago, although real per capita income has held up well. Any such fate for China – a much poorer country today than Japan in 1990 – has shattering implications.
> 
> Such a warning from a Japanese official may ruffle feathers in Beijing. The Communist authorities have studied Japan’s Lost Decade closely and are convinced they can avoid the same errors.
> 
> The Pacific rivals are embroiled in a bitter dispute over the Senaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea. Nationalists from both sides have landed on the Japanese-administered islands.
> 
> It is unclear how easily China can manage the hang-over after letting home price-to-income ratios peak at nose-bleed highs of 16 to 18 in the coastal cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Shenzhen.
> 
> The authorities deliberately choked the boom by tightening credit last year but have discovered that it is not easy to stop the effects spilling into the rest of the economy, causing an industrial recession.
> 
> Export growth fizzled over the summer. Komatsu’s index of excavator usage – a proxy gauge of Chinese construction – fell 13pc in July. The Yangtze ship-building industry is in dire straits. China’s largest shipbuilder, Rongsheng, has not had a single order this year.
> 
> Richard Koo, from Nomura, said worries about China’s slowdown have spread from financial markets to national security officials.
> 
> Jing Ulrich from JP Morgan China said the mini-slump may drag on as Chinese exporters struggle with a recession in Europe, wafer-thin margins and price wars.
> 
> “The unpleasant situation for industrial companies is unlikely to change until the second quarter next year. The country’s stock market will face big challenges in coming months as excess production capacity becomes more obvious,” she said, predicting that growth would slow from torrid rates of 10pc to nearer 6pc over the next five years.
> 
> Premier Wen Jiabao has warned repeatedly that China’s economy is badly out of kilter. He is trying to wean the system off exports and investment – a world record 49pc of GDP – switching to home-bred consumer demand.
> 
> A report earlier this year by the World Bank and China’s Development Research Centre warned that the low-hanging fruit of state-driven industrialisation is largely exhausted.
> 
> They said a quarter of China’s state companies lose money and warned that the country will remain stuck in the “middle-income trap” unless it ditches the top-down policies of Deng Xiaoping. This model relied on cheap labour and imported technology. It cannot carry China any further.
> 
> The reformers agree but good intentions are fading as the downturn deepens. Those calling for another blitz of cheap credit to keep the old game going are gaining the upper hand.
> 
> The city of Chongquing this week unveiled a $240bn (£153bn) investment in electronics, car plants, petrochemicals and other industries over the next three years, equal to 150pc of its GDP. This follows vast spending proposals by Ningbo, Guangzhou, and Changsha, apparently with the blessing of state-run banks and the Politburo.
> 
> Whatever the offical mantra, Beijing is bringing out its bubble pump again.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...ubble-in-danger-zone-warns-Bank-of-Japan.html


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## cfredo

Ulpia-Serdica said:


> The city of Chongquing this week unveiled a $240bn (£153bn) investment in electronics, car plants, petrochemicals and other industries over the next three years, equal to 150pc of its GDP. This follows vast spending proposals by Ningbo, Guangzhou, and Changsha, apparently with the blessing of state-run banks and the Politburo.
> 
> Whatever the offical mantra, Beijing is bringing out its bubble pump again.
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...ubble-in-danger-zone-warns-Bank-of-Japan.html


How is building plants fueling the bubble?


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## CoCoMilk

^^ They are thinking with their brains upside down.


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## Los Earth

cfredo said:


> ^^
> Why should a private company like CapitaLand (developer of the Chongqing Chaotianmen project above) waste money to show off China to the world? It isn't even a Chinese company.
> Most of the supertalls in China are private funded and those private developers aren't interested in showing the rest of the world how great China is. Their only interest is money and apparently they think that they will be able to make money out of those supertalls.
> "China" itself isn't building those supertalls...it's not like some guys from the Communist Party are sitting in a room and say: "Oh, let's build a 600m tower here and a 400m one over there!"


Skyscrapers do have to get approved to get built too. Which means that the government could approve alot of the buildings just because they want to.
Anyway my question was if these buildings really were needed (like the really tall ones) but I guess I won't know since your answer didn't make any sense


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## CoCoMilk

^^ 
Why would the Chinese government not approve these proposals that are from private investments? If anything, these are beneficial as it provides jobs, revenues for all that are involved in the construction, and limited liabilities to losses.

In other words, CapitaLand would be chiefly responsible for losses/revenue. Whether or not these buildings are needed are the concerns of the investor (CapitaLand) and hey, if they can't make profit out of it..then they probably would sell it at a lower rate...which would be another gain if the government buys it or other investors do.


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## Los Earth

^^
Ok so I guess they are needed for someways too.


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## Chrissib

> *China bubble in 'danger zone' warns Bank of Japan*
> China risks a repeat of Japan’s boom-bust disaster 20 years ago as exorbitant property prices combine with a demographic tipping point, a top Japanese official has warned.


True. The demography of China now clearly resembles that of Japan 20 years ago:


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## VECTROTALENZIS

^^

Yes, but Japan in 1990 was one of the richest countries in the world and exhausted out it's growth-potential in the 1980s. It didn't have any more room to grow.

China on the other hand is still quite poor compared to developed countries and there are still a bunch of people that wants to move into the cities. 300 million of people are expected to move into cities in the next 20 years, if they do, they will live city-lives which generates more money than farming-life. Today GDP per capita in cities in China are around $15 000 on average while the countryside have $3000. The GDP per capita will rise automatically if people go to the cities and live more advanced lives.


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## Crash_N

Or, those 300 million will live in crime infested slums because the house prices are way too high compared to average income in China.
And how exactly has Japan "exhausted its growth potential"? They fucked up their finances and property market long term, sure, but there's a lot of room for economic growth there, especially seeing as Japan is a world leader in innovating technologies of the future.


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## Paddington

I'm sure China's ghost cities will fill up soon enough. It has a lot of rural poor that would like to and eventually will migrate to the city for work.

Most of the developing world has the opposite problem of too little housing stock for their fast growing cities.


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## :jax:

As long as they are where people want to live, they will fill up, and 50 years from now it will not be noticeable. But they are liable to make a local or national financial crisis, and a prolonged market glut/depression. This is very common with cities in fast-growing phases throughout history. I don't think Chinese cities are in a worse state than those, but neither do I think they are in a better state. Chinese cities in general are in their teenage years, it's an exciting time, but also a risky one. Picking which ones that will grow up successfully and which ones will end up juvenile delinquents is not going to be easy.


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## adventurenepal

I thought Chinese products were cheap, and these homes are expensive..


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## the spliff fairy

???


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## Yellow Fever

he is a new user and he has a lot to learn.  I believe he meant to say Chinese products in China are usually inexpensive.


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## KøbenhavnK

Very interesting. If the topic was limited to this thread all China supertall threads would shrink considerably.

A city like Ordos might not be used untill archaeologists stumble over it in a few thousand years but that will probably be the exception.

Check out the link below to see why investors with deep pockets keep putting their savings into real estate across the country.

In just over two minutes the video visualizes the greatest migration of humans the world has ever seen- happening right now

INFO: I'm not allowed to post urls..... (WHY?)

Maybe someone can search youtube:

"NY Times 250 million" and post the video.... I think it's jaw dropping


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## cfredo

^^
I think you don't have enough posts to do this.

Here you go 





But what's with the BS about "the government forcing villagers to move to the cities"?!? The government is basically doing the exact opposite thing: the hukou system prevents this kind of mass migration of happening too fast.


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## KøbenhavnK

Thank you

I was wondering about the "being forced" phrase as well. Probably it´s a lost-in-translation kind of thing. There seem to be a lot of those around.


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## Slartibartfas

Wow, who's behind this BS video? 

I have no idea what urbanization policies China really has but I would be surprised if they were to push urbanization, instead of merely trying to cope with a naturally accuring demographic pressure. 

Contrary to what is claimed in the video, urbanization of the Western world did not need "centuries". In the UK it took 90 years to urbanize from 17% to 71%. And that was in the 19th cenutry with more modest capabilities of construction etc. During the strongest growth phase of Vienna population almost triplicated within 50 years.

China's urbanization process is even faster but also our modern means are better to cope with such extremely rapid processes.


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## cfredo

Slartibartfas said:


> Wow, who's behind this BS video?


The New York Times on a personal vendetta against the Chinese government.
Journalism at its best... :crazy:


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## binhai

In most cases they are trying to push urbanization around existing cities, meaning existing villages on the edges of cities get demolished and the whole area gets redeveloped and urbanized, so this kind of example is semi-forced, but the vast majority of villagers in this case are quite happy with the vast increase in living standards, while a small number are sad at the loss of village and traditional life, but still get a big payoff so it's not terribly unfair. Look at the edges of North China cities in Google Earth, tons of recently cleared villages. South China villages tend to urbanize more "organically", only a few cases they have gotten cleared, I love Guangdong and its purely organic urban development in some areas.

China has other urbanization programs in places further away from cities, in places like rural Guizhou they are encouraging through incentives (not forced) for people to relocate to bigger towns to boost economic efficiency, however, not everyone is doing so.


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## BE0GRAD

I wonder how much would Chinese non-democratic decision making influence this issue. It appears it is a positive characteristic as it eases the process of problem solving without the populist element democracies usually have.


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## Slartibartfas

Thank you BarbaricManchurian for your insight. That was largely what I meant above. The Chinese leadership seems to have a focus on channeling urbanization trends into certain areas that they also target for heavy urban development. 

It is interesting that you mention that they give incentives in certain areas for urbanization. I would guess that this is mainly in regions where they are trying to establish further urban centers in order to take pressure especially from the coastal regions. But that is just a guesss.

@Beograd
Authoritarian regimes do have advantages and disadvantages. If you have a fairly reasonable leadership, they can compete fairly well with democratic countries. This is especially the case when it comes to rapid development. They are more prone to corruption than demoratic systems however, because the checks and balances are clearly a lot weaker. (I am not saying that democracies are not prone to corruption, but less so than autocratic systems)

The biggest problem with authoritarian regimes is however if the leadership goes nuts or puts some personal interests above everything else, entirely ignoring the interests of the population. I am just thinking about the cultural revolution here ...


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## BE0GRAD

Slartibartfas said:


> Authoritarian regimes do have advantages and disadvantages. If you have a fairly reasonable leadership, they can compete fairly well with democratic countries. This is especially the case when it comes to rapid development. They are more prone to corruption than demoratic systems however, because the checks and balances are clearly a lot weaker. (I am not saying that democracies are not prone to corruption, but less so than autocratic systems)
> 
> The biggest problem with authoritarian regimes is however if the leadership goes nuts or puts some personal interests above everything else, entirely ignoring the interests of the population. I am just thinking about the cultural revolution here ...


I'd say it is all about how well organized control mechanisms are and by control mechanisms I mostly mean independent expert bodies in specific fields. The country can be a democracy or non-democracy but if it has these control mechanisms that prevent the leadership from taking populist measures (democracies) or plunging into systemic corruption (both democracies and non-democracies) it can prosper regardless of its environment and local challenges because the voice of experts will always outweigh the voices of populists and corrupt officials.


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## Slartibartfas

A non-democracy can hardly have strong control mechanisms from experts. It can only have control mechnaisms at the leadership's mercy, with all its consequences. Otherwise the authoritarian regime would be destablized. 

That is a consequence of the checks and balances system in democracies. At leas if they work. Authoritarian regimes have a much harder time implementing such checks and balances because that questions the whole system much more than in democracies.


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## :jax:

I tend to side more with "democracy as a reward" these days, that is full democracy is a symptom of a well-functioning society, rather than the cause. There are many things I find lacking in China, like a strong civil society and sense of community, but that is also the case with other countries at the same level of development, formally a democracy or not. 

China has taken an engineering approach to development, much like Britain did in the late 19th century and the US in the early 20th century. On the whole it has been successful, with some glaring failures and faults that have been lost in the passage of time, one example of which is the environment.


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## zaphod

Meeting the minimum conditions for capitalism and growth and having a lot pent up demand and resources. I always imagined it as being like a fire. You need fuel, air circulation, and a spark.



> China has taken an engineering approach to development, much like Britain did in the late 19th century and the US in the early 20th century.


Businessmen in Britain and the US in the early 20th century had the singular goal of making enormous amounts of money. It was pure grace that the public good intersected with industrialization. IMO the celebration of modernity and engineering was rhetoric to facilitate a kind of trade -the electorate would respect the rule of law and the autonomy of industry in exchange for rising living standards. But it was a good trade, in the 20th century progressives>leftism.


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## binhai

Ordos, Inner Mongolia street view:

http://map.qq.com/#pano=13061002130721134323900&heading=234&pitch=9&zoom=1

http://map.qq.com/#pano=13061002130719150111700&heading=139&pitch=12&zoom=1

http://map.qq.com/#pano=13061002130718153940100&heading=99&pitch=4&zoom=1

This is the POSTER BOY for Chinese ghost cities and it's totally functional and populated. It kind of makes one question the other places considered ghost properties/areas...

New South China Mall

http://map.qq.com/#pano=26151004120930162508400&heading=182&pitch=3&zoom=1

This supposed "ghost mall" is not only open and functional but looks bustling and even has western fast-food outlets KFC and McDonalds open! Go around the *entire perimeter* of the mall. It's all alive.

Supposed French-replica ghost town near Hangzhou

http://map.qq.com/#pano=10091042130303144133700&heading=149&pitch=15&zoom=1

http://map.qq.com/#pano=10091042130303144143100&heading=154&pitch=3&zoom=1

Totally alive!

So ghost cities really *are* a total media fabrication. If anyone can point to ANY ghost city one can see on street view, please let us know! Street view does not lie!


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## the spliff fairy

the links don't work for me


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## :jax:

BarbaricManchurian said:


> New South China Mall
> 
> http://map.qq.com/#pano=26151004120930162508400&heading=182&pitch=3&zoom=1
> 
> This supposed "ghost mall" is not only open and functional but looks bustling and even has western fast-food outlets KFC and McDonalds open! Go around the *entire perimeter* of the mall. It's all alive.


As a shopping mall it is dead. I haven't been there myself, I have been in different locations of Dongguan many times, but this mall is in such an inconvenient location, I'd spend the day getting there and back, that it hasn't been worth it. Locals also claim it is dead. The structure might be re-purposed, but not as a shopping mall. 

In general in China if you want a quiet place with no people you go to a shopping mall (if on the other hand you want the bustle of the city, I'd recommend the metro or a city bus). Shopping malls find it hard to compete, the number of consumers are increasing, but the number of shopping malls are increasing even faster, and more devastatingly the Chinese consumer is increasingly turning to the Internet. There are winners among shopping malls, those that get the formula right, but there are more losers. This shopping mall seems to have done everything wrong.

There has been a belief, not just in China, that in order to succeed you have to make your mall bigger. Big is not bad, but you also have to make it better. The biggest shopping malls all look like a throwback to the 1990s and they are devoid of customers.


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