34 Unforgettable Photos Of China’s Massive,Uninhabited Ghost Cities

By Natasha Ishak Published April28, 2019  Updated October 23,2020

The country's ambitious plans for urban growthhave led to more than 50 abandoned cities whose empty buildings paint adystopian landscape.

Extravagantmonuments, spacious parks, modern buildings, and interconnected roads would allseem to indicate a bustling metropolis. But in China, there is an increasingnumber of uninhabited "ghost" cities that seem to have been abandonedafter years of construction.

It isunclear how many of these Chinese ghost cities currently exist, but estimatesput the number as high as 50 municipalities.

Some ofthese cities have yet to be completed while others are fully functioning metropolises,save for the lack of residents. The occurrence of these ghost cities acrossChina has, unsurprisingly, attracted significant attention from internationalobservers.

"Allof them are bizarre, all of them are surreal. There's no other way to describea city meant for thousands of people that's just completely empty,"explained Samuel Stevenson-Yang, a photographer working to document this modernChinese phenomenon, in an interview with ABC Australia.

The Making Of A Chinese Ghost City

The street lamps, expansive parks, and sprawling highrises thatdot these ghost cities undoubtedly inspire comparisons to dystopian visions ofthe future.

As China continues to experience rapid economic growth, thegovernment has rushed to urbanize massive rural areas. One of the key goals ofthis urbanization project is to redistribute economic opportunities that havedrawn millions of rural inhabitants into coastal cities, but observers believethat the government's overambitious construction plans may have backfired.

Kangbashidistrict is a perfect example. It was meant to be a bustling urban district inthe city of Ordos in Inner Mongolia, built using profits that were pouring infrom the coal industry boom.

The90,000-acre development sits right at the edge of the massive Gobi Desert. Itincludes many of the fixtures one would expect to find in a city once dubbedChina's answer to Dubai: colossal plazas, expansive shopping malls, largecommercial and residential complexes, and towering government buildings.

Thehope was that these facilities would attract commuters from nearby Dongshengand help accommodate the two million residents of Ordos.

"Thisis a good place, with modern buildings, grand plazas and many touristattractions," Yang Xiaolong, a security guard working in one ofKangbashi's new office buildings, told the SouthChina Morning Post. "Once there are morepeople and businesses, the city will be more lively."

But thedistrict that was planned to house more than one million people currentlyhouses less than 100,000, and it is still less than halfway toward thedistrict's goal of housing 300,000 people by 2020. Despite all their efforts,Kangbashi's skyscrapers and residential buildings remain as empty as itsstreets.

Ghost Cities Are Nothing New

Mostcountries have experienced a similar development phase at some point whereroads and buildings for new cities were being built in locations that lackedthe population to fill them.

Thedifference, however, is that modern urban developments in China have anunprecedented scale and speed. Just how fast is China going? The country hasused more cement in its construction of new cities between 2011 to 2013 thanthe entirety of the United States in the 20th century.

Accordingto statistics reported by the Beijing Morning Post, thenumber of empty apartment properties that are sitting in these Chinese ghostcities may be as high as 50million.

Thisestimate was supplied by the State Grid Corporation of China, based on thenumber of apartment buildings that have been completed but have not usedelectricity for six straight months in 2010. That number could very well doubleby 2020.

Despitethese staggering numbers, some believe that the Chinese ghost cities that havesprung from the overzealousness of its government are temporary. They maintainthat this overload of construction will pay off for China in the long run, asthe country continues to experience economic growth.

Problems Of Real Estate And A Bubbling DebtCrisis

Thesight of thousands of empty buildings is not the only thing that Chinese ghostcities are leaving in their wake. The massive capital that backed thesedevelopments was largely funded by the country's ballooning debt, and expertsthink it's only a matter of time before it will burst.

To makematters worse, there is also the issue of soaring property costsassociatedwith purchased but unoccupied housing, which could spell disaster for youngerChinese who want to become homeowners.

But notall is lost with China's ghost towns. Even Kangbashi, a city that was practicallybuilt in the desert, can still turn things around. Carla Hajjar, an urbandesign researcher working on her master's thesis at Tongji University inShanghai, frequents Kangbashi as a case study for her research.

"I wasreally surprised because there are people," Carla explained her firstimpression of the ghost city to Forbes. "And thosepeople are really friendly and welcoming, they don't look at you like you're astranger."

Shenzhen — A Success Story And Potential ModelFor The Future

Moreover, many of China's most prosperous cities were built witha develop-now-fill-later approach, which has, to some extent, proven to work inChina's favor.

One example is the 12-million-strong city of Shenzhen thatstraddles China's border with Hong Kong. In 1980, it was a sleepy fishing townwith a population of 30,000. Shenzhen is now China's fourth largest city andone of the wealthiest thanks to its focus on high tech industries.

Another example often cited by Chinese optimists is Pudong, arevitalized area across from Shanghai that was once a considered a"swamp."

"[Pudong] is an example of designed urbanization goingreally well," said Tim Murray, a managing partner at research firm JCapital. "I was working in Shanghai when that was still a dream and I usedto look at it and think 'these guys are nuts just building so much and nobodyis gonna use it'... I was wrong. It's just been so successful," he said.

The Struggle For Revival

Despitethe seemingly staggering scale of China's ghost city problem, the governmenthas been able to revive several former ghost cities into thriving metropolises.The key, it seems, are jobs and quality transportation to attract youngprofessionals, new families, and residents who are looking to retire.

Forexample, the ghost city of Zhengdong rose from the ashes after the localgovernment paid a Taiwanese phone manufacturer to open a factory in the city.The factory attracted droves of people looking for jobs and the eventuallyemployed 200,000 workers. The promise of new jobs jumpstarted the former ghosttown seemingly overnight.

Similarly,the luxury resort of Jingjin New Town, about 70 miles from Beijing, is awaitingits own infusion of workers. Currently, it has a few small shops and holidayhomes but remains empty for much of the year. However, an upcoming high-speedrailway line that will be passing through the city is expected to jumpstart itsrevitalization.

Despitethis optimistic outlook, international observers note that these examples arenot the rule to China's urban construction gamble, but the exception. But aslong as the government continues to wager its bets on long-term growth, thereis a good chance at least some of China's ghost cities will come back from thedead.