Sunday, April 22, 2012

Chinese ghost towns getting spookier

The city of Ordos, which we noted before as being a rather empty place, is getting even more empty.

The city of Ordos (with a city center designed to hold 1.5 million) has lost 300,000 of the immigrants that actually did show up in the somewhat less than successful "build it and they will come" approach to urban planning.  Based around coal production, there is no longer enough work to keep them employed.  The service industries (restaurants, shops, etcetera) that catered to them are also abandoning ship.

Folks Flee the Ghost City
Zarathustra, Macrobusiness, 17 April 2012 (hat tip: NC).

This city is dying. For a city which is clearly too large to accommodate its people, it is curious to see the headline on Sina that migrants are leaving Ordos. After the underground lending bust in Ordos, a lot of people involved in underground lending have gone bust. As the economy cools, together with the death of underground credit, the real estate market has died and constructions have halted everywhere, forcing people to leave.


We have sited Zarathustra before, so he is very much Johnny-on-the-spot with the Chinese Ghost Busters team.

3 comments:

Odysseus said...

The scarier thing is just how deep a hole China is digging for themselves and just what a bomb this is going to drop on the worlds economy when the bubble pops.

PioneerPreppy said...

If it happens anytime soon it will give the golfer in chief a new excuse for his campaign.

russell1200 said...

O: Yes, as I have note in the past, it was the money lending, big exporter (the U.S.) that was hammered hardest in the great depression. We were doing what the Chineses did, lending money so people would keep buying. The crash of the Austrian banking system set of a chain reaction of defaults. It is a part of Great Depression history that is known, but not discussed much.

PP: I am sure he can spin anything, but I am not sure I follow you. And for the record, I would be happier if he spent all his time golfing.