China's Empty Cities

In season 1, episode 6 of Vice on HBO, they also went to the ghost cities of China. http://hbo.vice.com/episode-six

Wonder why people haven't made movies in these locations yet. Great place for a gang to operate out of, surely?

The casual dismissal of their sincerity is annoying ("don't know if they're telling the truth, or just saying government-friendly things because the governmental people are here right now!"). At least do the due research if such claims are going to be made by trying to get interviews from these folks without governmental people's presence, or just don't doubt their sincerity. But please don't just sprinkle in the there's-no-freedom-in-China FUD willy-nilly that we've all heard enough of already. This is like how when the hacker faction of PLA is talked about there's an ominous music in the background and serious faces of reporters looking at you to set the tone of the piece as if China is this mysterious and strange entity that is going to bring us down, all the while America's Olymic Games programs hardly even ever get a mention.

Anyway, I think we might be looking too hard for large problems where there might not be any. Don't forget that we have a similarly ridiculous situation in America: for every homeless person there are 26 houses that are vacant. Considering that China's population is a 1.35 billion (about a billion more than America's), at least in one respect it would seem like a prudent choice to build high-rises in place of crudely-made one or two-storey building houses in anticipation of future housing issues.

I'm a Chinese and I'm not feeling strange at all why that old farmer would be so grateful to the government and Party. Actually there are a large mount of former-famers around cities attain sudden wealth, through selling their land to the government. Price varies with the economy situation of that city, but is generally comparable with dozens of year's income of their families. Also, there are a lot farmers failed to reach contract with government, then some of them are violently forced to sell their house and land, though this situation seems to be better controlled these years. Anyway, land and house are always big thing for almost everyone and every government, both good and evil will be stimulated.