China’s Ghostly Cities: Change on the Horizon?

by Hugh Holroyd

This image is of a replica Eiffel Tower in a Chinese development

which includes replicas of several European cities

Ever since the Communist revolution, the Chinese government has been undertaking massive construction projects in a effort to industrialise and urbanise their country. The result of the most recent of these construction booms is that within China there are hundreds of cities able to house millions of people yet they are almost entirely empty. These ghost cities have been the laughing stock of the world ever since they started appearing in the early 1990s; now, however, change may be on the horizon.

the initial idea for these cities came about during the 1980s as part of China's great urbanisation plan which was intended to relocate hundreds of millions of China’s rural citizens into urban areas in an effort to fuel economic growth and increase productivity. Over the next decades, hundreds of cities were built by the government in order to meet its ambitious targets for urbanisation; the problem, however, was that no one was moving into these new developments. Part of the problem was that local governments were unwilling to provide crucial services, such as schools and transport, until there were enough people living there to justify the cost and at the same time people were unwilling to move to areas with no services.

The construction of these ghost cities was boosted by local governments trying to meet their economic targets by building massive infrastructure projects in an effort to create jobs and stimulate the property market. For many years these cities have been left as ghost towns with a sense of eerie silence surrounding them. Some estimates put the number of vacant apartments at 64.5 million.

Continuing construction all over China

Things, however, may be changing. Wade Shepard the author of “Ghost Cities of China” who has been following the evolution of ghost cities since the early 2000s reckons that these cities are just in a phase between construction and being occupied. "A lot of these cities that got their start in 2000, 2003, they are pretty much developed . . . If you look around, you will think this is a normal city and just assume this is the way it always was, not knowing that 10 years ago people were calling it a ghost city; 20 years ago it was just apartments and villages.” Mr Shepard draws comparisons between the construction in China and construction in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. A strong example of the change occurring in these cities is Pudong. It was established in 1993 and for many years remained empty; now, however, the Pudong financial district is vibrant and successful being the home of several large companies and the surrounding areas now have 99% occupancy. Pudong is becoming more and more like a standard example of a ghost city; however, the future is not yet entirely clear for the many millions of empty apartments.