Tag Archives: ghost cities

For the fourth quarter as a whole, Chinese exports rose by just less than 10% year-over-year. That’s the highest quarterly rate in more than three years, up from 6.3% and 6.0% in Q2 2017 and Q3, respectively. That acceleration is, predictably, being celebrated as a meaningful leap in global economic fortunes. Instead, it highlights China’s grand predicament, one that country just cannot seem to escape. China Exports,...

The backbone of China’s internal economy has been its ghost cities, but not as they may be ghost towns now, rather in how little time they might take to fill up. If the lag was relatively small because of restored growth, more would be needed and the Chinese building economy rolling ever onward. “Reflationary” prices were often Chinese prices of just that perceived process. The perceptions of a possible “hard landing”...

The backbone of China’s internal economy has been its ghost cities, but not as they may be ghost towns now, rather in how little time they might take to fill up. If the lag was relatively small because of restored growth, more would be needed and the Chinese building economy rolling ever onward. “Reflationary” prices were often Chinese prices of just that perceived process. The perceptions of a possible “hard landing”...

The term “ghost city” is a loaded one, often deployed to skew toward a particular viewpoint. In the context of China’s economy, it has become shorthand for perhaps the largest asset bubble in human history. While that may ultimately be the case, in truth China’s ghost cities aren’t about the past but its future. There is a great deal that is misunderstood about the country’s path toward urbanization and modernity. A...

To the naked eye, it represents progress. China has still an enormous rural population doing subsistence level farming. As the nation grows economically, such a way of life is an inherent drag, an anchor on aggregate efficiency Chinese officials would rather not put up with. Moving a quarter of a billion people into cities in an historically condensed time period calls for radical thinking, and radical doing. In one...