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China's Empty Cities

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Re: China's Empty Cities

#51

Post by r0h1n »

jebblue wrote: post #44
r0h1n wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all US ghost towns are are dramatically smaller. There seem to be many with peak population in the (low) tens of thousands. - http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-01-townha... - http://finance.yahoo.com/news/american-ghost-towns-21st-cent... And while I agree with you that they weren't unoccupied to begin with, unlike the case with many of China's ghost cities, I beg to disagree on the rest of your…

>> namely that the US model was appropriate for its time There was no model other than freedom. Freedom to invent, create, build, farm all as we saw fit. This is completely different and perhaps antithetical to what the Chinese are doing now. Their government is trying to will the result of prosperity into existence rather than allow it to culminate on its own as it does in a truly free society.

Without defending the Chinese model (which for the record I despise), let us also not forget that "freedom" is relative and defined from the POV of the winners/majority.

In the case of the "building" of America, so to speak, were there not people who did not quite enjoy the same freedom you speak of? In fact millions would have forfeited their freedom so the rest could "invent, create, build and farm as they saw fit".

Re: China's Empty Cities

#52

Post by jebblue »

r0h1n wrote: post #51
jebblue wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> namely that the US model was appropriate for its time There was no model other than freedom. Freedom to invent, create, build, farm all as we saw fit. This is completely different and perhaps antithetical to what the Chinese are doing now. Their government is trying to will the result of prosperity into existence rather than allow it to culminate on its own as it does in a truly free society.

Without defending the Chinese model (which for the record I despise), let us also not forget that "freedom" is relative and defined from the POV of the winners/majority. In the case of the "building" of America, so to speak, were there not people who did not quite enjoy the same freedom you speak of? In fact millions would have forfeited their freedom so the rest could "invent, create, build and farm as they saw fit"…

America isn't a perfect country but it's the best one I know of.

Re: China's Empty Cities

#53

Post by [deleted] »

jebblue wrote: post #44
r0h1n wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all US ghost towns are are dramatically smaller. There seem to be many with peak population in the (low) tens of thousands. - http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-01-townha... - http://finance.yahoo.com/news/american-ghost-towns-21st-cent... And while I agree with you that they weren't unoccupied to begin with, unlike the case with many of China's ghost cities, I beg to disagree on the rest of your…

>> namely that the US model was appropriate for its time There was no model other than freedom. Freedom to invent, create, build, farm all as we saw fit. This is completely different and perhaps antithetical to what the Chinese are doing now. Their government is trying to will the result of prosperity into existence rather than allow it to culminate on its own as it does in a truly free society.

[deleted]

Re: China's Empty Cities

#54

Post by _delirium »

sridharvembu wrote: post #42

In purely economic terms, China has performed a fascinating ongoing experiment. The Party looked at the "end state" of an industrialized, prosperous middle-class nation and then decided to will that end state into existence. In that end state, China needs to urbanize on a massive scale and these cities are simply the physical manifestation. This is the grandest scale human experiment ever, collectivist decision makin…

Interestingly, this has long been one of the main Marxist criticisms of the policy of centrally driven industrialization (which Marx didn't believe in, but Lenin did). The traditional Marxist view is that socialism can only be instituted after capitalist industrialization, because it's a revolution driven by the urban proletariat that capitalist industrialization creates, not something that can be artificially created absent those material conditions. Hence the view of orthodox Marxists that "socialist" industrialization driven by a vanguard party would be internally incoherent, or at least non-Marxist.

(One hears less about this today, because the German revolution failed while the Russian one succeeded, so Lenin won out over Kautsky in dominating 20th-century leftist discourse.)

Re: China's Empty Cities

#55

Post by toomuchtodo »

jebblue wrote: post #52
r0h1n wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without defending the Chinese model (which for the record I despise), let us also not forget that "freedom" is relative and defined from the POV of the winners/majority. In the case of the "building" of America, so to speak, were there not people who did not quite enjoy the same freedom you speak of? In fact millions would have forfeited their freedom so the rest could "invent, create, build and farm as they saw fit"…

America isn't a perfect country but it's the best one I know of.

Ehhhh, lets not get crazy. I'm a US citizen and have lived in the US all my life, and I could name a handful of countries much better, based on GDP, happiness, or the accessibility of affordable housing and healthcare.

The US is nice, but perfect it ain't.

Re: China's Empty Cities

#56

Post by [deleted] »

xtqctz wrote: post #21
jfoster wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were cheap, they wouldn't be ghost cities. They're ghost cities because poor people got kicked out of their homes to build expensive buildings that they now won't let go of for low prices. Eventually of course they'll need to sell it, once China's real estate bubble starts to pop.

Expensive for farmers who make $2kUSD per annum. Even in the central districts of tier two Chinese cities[1], rent is only $200-300/month for a decent two bedroom. In which case, they ought to just move to a functioning city. My total monthly expenses (rent, food, leisure, taxis, reasonably fast internet) are often [1]ie not Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou

[deleted]

Re: China's Empty Cities

#57

Post by eru »

r0h1n wrote: post #22
eru wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also India is much more densely populated.

True, but the examples in these cases are of cities that appeared to have been created anew - in China'a case in the middle of nowhere. India could never afford to create massive new cities using state funds like that, so it's city growth was organic by force, not by choice. Also the reason these cities are ghosts isn't because there aren't enough people in China (it is after all the world's most populous country), b…

> Also the reason these cities are ghosts isn't because there aren't enough people in China (it is after all the world's most populous country)

We have to talk about population density, not absolute numbers.

Re: China's Empty Cities

#58

Post by Volpe »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #38
Volpe wrote: post #18

It is really hard to work out the truth of these stories. They always mention these as "Ghost Cities" but the numbers are always mentioned like "This city was meant to house upto a million people"... a million people, is not a city, it's a large suburb. Or a very small city (in China), given they always build with med-high density housing. Could the reporters please do there job and ask the farmers out of earshot of…

You know that the majority of US cities house less than a million people, right? Seattle, San Francisco, Detroit, Boston, Denver, Washington DC, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Miami, etc. There are only 9 cities in the whole US with over a million people.

You know we are talking about China right? They don't build 400sm plots with a pool and a backyard. They build highrise apartments.

I thought I made that pretty clear when I said "med-high density houses".

Re: China's Empty Cities

#59

Post by Volpe »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #28
Volpe wrote: post #18

It is really hard to work out the truth of these stories. They always mention these as "Ghost Cities" but the numbers are always mentioned like "This city was meant to house upto a million people"... a million people, is not a city, it's a large suburb. Or a very small city (in China), given they always build with med-high density housing. Could the reporters please do there job and ask the farmers out of earshot of…

In Europe and much of America, any urban area with > 50k is often called a city. Heck, even around 10k could be called a city under certain circumstances. The properties of concern are more like satellite cities. Often in crappy remote locations outside the original city's outer ring road.

Europe and much of america has tiny populations compared to china.

So is this story really: "Lots of people live in china" ?

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