<story><title>‘China’s Manhattan’ Borrowed Heavily, but the People Have Yet to Arrive</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/business/china-economy-debt-tianjin.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>chrischen</author><text>I’m not a big fan of centrally planned cities, but this author has it out for China. The original articles about “China’a ghost town” were also not true. A narrative was invented to sell an interesting story about some failure of China... this article is a non-story, and just an attempt to revive a topic parroted since the last decade.&lt;p&gt;Many of China’s urban districts were centrally planned and sat empty before they were eventually filled, including the famous Pudong district of Shanghai.
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;amp&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;www.forbes.com&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;wadeshepard&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;ghost-towns-or-boomtowns-what-new-cities-really-become&amp;#x2F;amp&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;amp&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;www.forbes.com&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;wadeshepar...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;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.&amp;quot;
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;amp&amp;#x2F;amp.abc.net.au&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;9912186&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;amp&amp;#x2F;amp.abc.net.au&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;9912186&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Short story is some developments work, others don’t, but investing in real estate is one way for people to park money so people still end up buying up all the properties.</text></comment>
<story><title>‘China’s Manhattan’ Borrowed Heavily, but the People Have Yet to Arrive</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/business/china-economy-debt-tianjin.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gzu</author><text>I’ve been browsing around satellite view of Chinese cities for a while now.  There are hundreds of thousands of high rise apartment complexes without visible activity around them.  Literally copy paste buildings surrounded by empty fields.  How does this bode for China’s economy?  They are all over the place.</text></comment>