‘China’s Manhattan’ Borrowed Heavily, but the People Have Yet to Arrive

Re:‘China’s Manhattan’ Borrowed Heavily, but the People Have... by seanmcdirmid on Thursday April 11, 2019 @05:07PM (#19639208)

Oh, we all are aware that construction is a huge jobs program, and that most of these buildings are going to be torn down after 20-30 years of use, since Chinese construction using concrete and cheap labor necessarily requires overbuilding that makes proper maintenance very expensive. Local governments see this as a feature, since every new building is more GDP, even demolition of the previous building is added GDP they can report to central.

A lot of the speculation will have to fall off. A good old fashioned property bust would do wonders to correct all the distortions in the market, but the central government keeps doubling down on more.

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Re:‘China’s Manhattan’ Borrowed Heavily, but the People Have... by A2017U1 on Thursday April 11, 2019 @08:24PM (#19640712)

Call me a wowser but I far prefer a country whose big government employment program is building housing and not building armies that are ten times the size of all the largest other armies combined.

That's a nation with a very big unused hammer adventuring around the world looking for a nail.

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Re:‘China’s Manhattan’ Borrowed Heavily, but the People Have... by seanmcdirmid on Thursday April 11, 2019 @10:46PM (#19641498)

I never said it was “wrong,” just that there were consequences to this kind of thinking. So if you build something that is empty for 15 years, it was useless for half its lifetime, and that is if it was even being maintained while basically derelict; it is highly likely that when the building is actually needed, they will tear it down and start over again.

China will eventually move to a high skilled labor force and these problems will go away. But that is not today.

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