Thomas Friedman is fond of talking about how traveling from anywhere in China to anywhere in the United States is like traveling from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. Is this the future Thomas Friedman wants? The Chinese are building entire cities to house future populations that aren’t coming.
This is clearly insane even before you consider that China is experiencing a dramatic slowdown in the rate of their population growth because like much of Europe their birth rate is terminal . . . again as a matter of central planning.
There is good reason to worry about the Chinese but when you see this kind of insanity, you have to wonder about their long-term staying power. It was this kind of thinking that made it impossible for the former Soviet Union to overcome a determined opposition.
Still, that was 3 decades ago and our own staying power has changed. You can see the outlines of this monument to the delusion of central planning in Obama’s half trillion dollar painting project.
Actually the problem is real estate speculation, many of the “ghost cities” are sold out or nearly so. Apartment costs are actually rising in these places too – despite no-one living there, the Chinese government is taking some stringent action to try and deter investors but the problem is that there’s very little else for China’s rich to put their money in while currency controls prevent them from investing overseas.
Posted by Nick Kellingley | September 12, 2011, 11:28 pm