Baidu Data Research Reveals China's Ghost Cities (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Chinese web services giant, Baidu, has embarked on a new study in which it uses location information from users' mobile devices, as well as mapping and building data, to identify areas with high volumes of construction with relatively low population densities — known as 'ghost cities.' The researchers, in the published findings Ghost Cities: Analysis Based on Positioning Data in China, were able to discount areas which experienced high levels of tourism which skew the figures in peak seasons. The Baidu Big Data team discovered 50 ghost cities, although only 20 of these were revealed in the report to avoid potential harm to the real estate market in these areas.

Comments

Ghostly!

[Calydor]

Living in a ghost city gives me fast enough internet to get first post.

Home for refugees?

[slowdeath]

How about relocating Syrian refugees into these unused housing units?

Re:Home for refugees?

[quantaman]

They aren't looking for housing, they are looking for socialist freebies in the (still) richer part of Europe.

So you've uprooted your family to escape a really awful war zone and now need a new place to live, you have two options.

1) Stop in a country with a poor and fairly zenophobic population and very few people who share your religion or culture.

2) Stop in a country with a richer and less zenophobic population and communities of people who share your religion or culture.

Of course they're fleeing to the richer parts of Europe where some Muslims already live, they're rational people who want them and their children to have good lives, why wouldn't they? Would you really settle in a poor country if you were in their position?

As for settling them in the Chinese ghost cities they'd be put in a very difficult position without other people who shared their culture or language and living in a country who doesn't really know how to deal with immigrant populations, it probably wouldn't be their first choice.

Re:Home for refugees?

[geggo98]

Just in the case anyone is wondering: Zenophobic is defined as "the fear of Zen".

This is allowed?

[wile_e_wonka]

Is anyone else surprised that Baidu was willing and able to conduct and publish this study without intervention from the Chinese government?

Re:This is allowed?

[AK Marc]

They don't mention the ghost cities that got occupied. What happened is that the population boom was slowed too well by the one-child policy. The housing growth rate continued after the population growth slowed. So there was over-build. It was also a welfare program. Rather than paying billions for people to sit at home, China's welfare program is to pay people to build things someone will need. Even Shenzhen started out as a ghost city, and is now over-crowded, with about 12M people moving there over 25 years.

Re:This is allowed?

[guestapoo]

I don't think the Shenzhen example is valid, and not with the population (while some city, like Beijing is overcrowded), but I think the problem here is unbalanced development.

Shenzhen was built when Zheng Xiaoping began modernize China, with the help of USA. There was with plenty of opportunity to develop at this time, when China was likely built from the ground up. But now, it's easy to build city, but it's much harder to create social services, move to the businesses, etc, to the newly city.

Oh noes, can't have anything threating land prices

[UnknownSoldier]

> although only 20 of these were revealed in the report to avoid potential harm to the real estate market in these areas.

Wow. This is a new low for capitalism. Can't reveal facts because someone might lose money if they ever came to light ! /sarcasm And here I thought only the USA had the best government money can buy.

Huh.

[Type44Q]

Lead researcher, Guanghua Chi hopes that the study will help the Chinese government...

And the Chinese government hopes Guanghua Chi's organs enjoy long, prosperous lives in their new [wealthy, Australian] bodies...

There are no jobs for the Chinese there

[rsilvergun]

Why would it be any different for the refugees? It's kinda like when they relocated all those dirt poor black share croppers to the projects in the 70s and then Reagan pulled the funding sending them into a perpetual spiral of poverty. Did I say 'kinda'?

Re:There are no jobs for the Chinese there

[JoeMerchant]

Regan wasn't elected until the '80s, and I'd find it hard to give him credit for the perpetual spiral of poverty, that's been a hallmark of American Democracy since forever. The land of Equal Opportunity - well, except for those kids with rich parents, they get more equal opportunities than the rest.

Re:There are no jobs for the Chinese there

[plopez]

LBJ wasn't in office 'til the 60's. And the parks directory of NYC shares much of the blame, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:There are no jobs for the Chinese there

[dbIII]

True, he was a symptom of everything going to shit and not the cause. People get confused about him because he would say something (eg. never deal with terrorist) then do the opposite (eg. massive payout to Iran over the hostages as his first thing in office FFS, then arms dealing to Hezbolla and a long list of rebels in Central America).

Re:Should I be concerned?

[Coren22]

The primary way for Chinese people to legally invest money is to buy property, so many of these units go to property speculators trying to earn a return. Also, China plans far in advance, and the people have been moving from the country to the cities at an amazing rate there, so they are taking the long view and building housing for the boom that has been ongoing for decades. They won't always be ghost cities, but currently no one lives there.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great...

Protect The Monied Interests

[Afty0r]

"only 20 of these were revealed in the report to avoid potential harm to the real estate market in these areas" To avoid harm to a market, they are willing to withhold the truth, which potentially harms everyone who is considering purchasing (or even renting) a property in that market.

Re:Should I be concerned?

[Raseri]

China's so-called ghost cities are actually just very, very new. http://blogs.reuters.com/great... What actually seems to happen is that developers (the real estate kind, not the Steve Ballmer kind) buy land for cheap because it's far from any existing population center, but Chinese law requires them to build something rather than sitting on it. So all these developers build all this stuff, and after a few years people start moving in and the ghost cities become just plain cities.

Re:Oh noes, can't have anything threating land pri

[BotanistPrime]

This is how China operates! Only good news is reported. Bad news is not.

Re:Oh noes, can't have anything threating land pri

[trout007]

You misspelled communism.

Chinese long term thinking

[ErichTheRed]

I think it's been mentioned before that China is moving a lot of its rural population into cities to allow them to provide government services more efficiently, as well as create a larger consumer culture. At the same time, one of the only stable stores of wealth for Chinese is real estate. As many articles lately have mentioned, the stock market is even more speculative than ours and not suitable for long term investing. The only issue now is filling all these empty spaces so the original investors can get their money out.

We'll see what they have in mind for this next phase, but China has been remarkably good at long term central planning. It's something missing in Western countries -- the full control of authoritarianism while doing anything necessary to grow the economy. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Re:Chinese long term thinking

[quantaman]

I think it's been mentioned before that China is moving a lot of its rural population into cities to allow them to provide government services more efficiently, as well as create a larger consumer culture. At the same time, one of the only stable stores of wealth for Chinese is real estate. As many articles lately have mentioned, the stock market is even more speculative than ours and not suitable for long term investing. The only issue now is filling all these empty spaces so the original investors can get their money out.

We'll see what they have in mind for this next phase, but China has been remarkably good at long term central planning. It's something missing in Western countries -- the full control of authoritarianism while doing anything necessary to grow the economy. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Rather it's been very short term thinking, doing massive infrastructure projects of only marginal usefulness in order to maintain 10% economic growth and avoid a recession for reasons of political stability.

Do you really think they planned for massive empty cities? What do you think happens to big empty buildings? They don't hold their value.

Re:Oh noes, can't have anything threating land pri

[plopez]

More like state capitalism, aka fascism.

Re:Oh noes, can't have anything threating land pri

[LynnwoodRooster]

Which has been the typical result of every communist country (self-declared communist, at that) ever.