Twaddle to the right, twaddle to the left, and not a drop to drink. In contemplating China’s meteoric rise (though on thought I am not sure that meteors rise) Americans usually attribute it to cheap labor or theft of intellectual property or unfair governmental subsidies. But our religious faith in free enterprise, in which individuals and companies compete with each other in Darwinian fashion to produce winners, isn’t working. China seems to have a better approach. Call it pragmatism, intelligent design, or the idea that if it works, do it.
Having passed part of a misspent life in East Asia, I subscribe to Asia Times, Nikkei Asia, the South china Morning Post and, being something of a tech head, I haunt tech sites. The China reported in these, and that I see on trips, isnot remotely the China that is imagined by many in the West.
The American media, whether by intention or inattention, do not convey the scale of what the Chinese are doing. Multiple extremely high-voltage power lines thousands of miles in length carrying power from solar farms in the northwest to cities in the southeast. Over 25,000 miles of fast, quiet, comfortable rail. New dams. Factories automated to the point of almost seeming alive. Astonishing bridges. On and on. Why does this happen there, and not here?
Because America has a corrupt, inefficient, and outmoded economic system rotted by an impractical and equally outmoded society, often managed by incompetents if not actual fools. It cannot compete against China’s multiple advantages. Let us consider these.
Advantage One: China is a nation of engineers, America of lawyers. Of the 535 members of Congress, eight are engineers. In a world dominated by science and engineering, a country ruled by technical illiterates will be at a disadvantage. And is.
Advantage Two: China’s government is a serious enterprise within the limits of human fallibility. The United States government is not. America chooses its leaders not for competence but by popularity contests among provincial lawyers. No President since Jimmy Carter could calculate the first derivative of sin x, freshman calculus. No one on the House China Committee reads, writes, or speaks Chinese, or has a university degree in East Asian studies. A friend of mine, a former US senator, once estimated to me that ninety percent of the Senate doesn’t know where Myan Mar is. Of the forty members of the House Science Committee, there are one or two scientists, depending on definition. This is not serious governance.
Advantage Three: China is authoritarian. This means that if (an engineering-oriented) Beijing decides that China needs a high-speed rail line between A and B, construction begins the next day. California has tried for a couple of decades to run a high-speed line between Los Angeles and San Francisco at great expense and with no results. America will never have high-speed rail because the line will run through a black ghetto or an Indian burial ground that the Indians have forgotten and there will be fifteen lawsuits over the route and the airlines will bribe Congress to block the project because it would gut their business. No one has the authority to take a decision and make it stick.
Advantage Four: Hard to prove and impossible to quantify, the Chinese have an affinity for business that seems almost genetic. They are competitive to the far edge of cutthroat and commercially agile. When a new technology appears, such as 5G or Deepseek, it quickly becomes embedded in other products. Almost carnivorous, Chinese often go first for market share and for profit later. They have been called the Jews of Asia and are often hated because overseas Chinese frequently end up dominating business in other countries, sometimes resulting in riots. In the United States, Chinese are greatly over-represented in tech and the sciences.
Advantage Five: China is not democratic, at least not in the Western sense. This means that policy is not shaped by whims of a public ignorant of underlying complexities. It also means that the Chinese can undertake projects lasting for as many years as needed. Policy does not change every two, four, or six years. In America one President is for imigration or green energy or electric cars, the next one against, the following one for, and so on. By contrast China, having decided that fast rail was essential to the country’s future, kept building year after year until, at last count, it has over 25,000 miles. this pattern of sustained, focused effort over many years is common in China.
Advantage Six: China’s approach to foreign policy is primarily commercial and America’s, military. Beijing has one, small, overseas military base, at Djibouti. America has some 750. Around the world China builds sea ports, factories, and rail lines. America builds military bases.
Further, China is cautious, apparently regarding wars as stupid, unpredictable, and expensive. Since 1830 it has started only two wars, the annexation of Tibet and a short war with Vietnam in 1979. By contrast, in just the last year America has bombed Yemen, bombed Somalia, bombed Iran, supplied Kiev with weaponry to sustain America’s proxy war with Russia, armed and protected Israel’s massacre of Palestinians, bombed Venezuelan boats, threatened to attack Venezuela, and prepares seriously to start a war with China.
China’s pacific policy is more practical than moral. It does not mean that the Chinese are warm and fuzzy. China is a police state, though not nearly as disagreeable as, say, North Korea or the old Soviet Union. I presume without knowledge that it has torture camps to equal Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and CIA black sites. It does mean that they have a different approach: Make money, not war.
Note that in the trade war, America is tactically aggressive but strategically defensive. In industry after industry, it cannot compete with China or, increasingly, with the developing world. The economic and technological center of gravity moves inexorably toward Asia. Consequently America has to use strong arm measures to fend off the Chinese commercial juggernaut.
For example, America once dominated in automobiles but now resorts to tariffs to exclude superior Chinese electric vehicles. America, whose technological dominance was once absolute, now has to strongarm Taiwan into building semiconductor fabs in-Arizona. China has replaced the US as the dominant manufacturing power, in scale, technology, and efficiency. When China burst on the scene with 5G, the US, unable to make a better product at a better price, banned Huawei from the country and twisted arms in europe to make what amount to vassals do the same. Washington is now alarmed at China’s rate of advance in things from reusable launch vehicles to semiconductors, in the latter case not competing but trying to prevent China from accessing American tech in one of few fields in which the US still dominates.
The American attempt to prevent China from using American technology unsurprisingly spurs Beijing to try to develop indigenous tech to replace American. When China decides that it needs something, it throws money and engineers at it for as long as it takes. this would seem to make perfect sense, and works, but the US can neither decide nor throw. You can’t develop dominant ship-building, or electric cars, or manufacturing by sitting around and hoping that someone will come along and do it.
Consider Tian Jian, a Chinese automated seaport that operates twenty-four seven, without people, its cranes automatically putting containers on trucks that drive themselves to wherever needed. Such ports do not grow up in isolation. For example, an automated seaport requires steel, self-driving electric trucks, a mature electric-vehicle industry to supply the trucks, advanced batteries for the trucks, a trained work force, advanced 5G or better, advanced automation engineering, excellent universities to provide the engineers, and good pre-university schooling to make the engineers possible. Behind all this is civil engineering that supplies highways, bridges, electricity, mines, and raw materials. China has all of these. America? Almost none. We are seeing WASP rot on a continental scale. This does not bode well for the attempt to regenerate America as a dominant manufacturing power.
While I have not questioned Xi Jin Ping on this matter, I will guess confidently that such an all-encompassing supply chain did not sprang up without planning. It is equaled nowhere in the world. This leaves Washington with two choices: stop trying to dominate the world, or war.
When I studied business 35 years ago there was a lot of talk about Japanese manufacturing methods and how with tools like Quality Circles they would use the intelligence of their normal production staff to propose and introduce process improvements.
These techniques didn’t seem to work in UK.
It seems pretty clear to me that what Japan really had was much higher and ambitious production staff than UK. After all a japanese factory worker had good basic education, limited options as an office worker and was likely earning much more than his or her Dad.
You can make the comparison with Industrial revolution Brits or 1930s-60s Americans.
Or 2000+ Chinese.
As Apple says, they don’t produce in China becuase the workers are cheap. They produce there because the workers are highly skilled, industrial management excellent, and there are chains of related industries to provide necessary parts and services.
the engineer vs lawyer observation was made 35 years ago vis-a-vis japan. as well as the short term event horizon for american bizness chiefs. both timely warnings and as valid as they have been ignored.
for the last 20 years half of the political leadership hates america. their law school perfessers taught them how.
what did you think radically transform meant ?
this is occurring at the mathematical point in time where the currency, national debt, inflation has gone asymptotic. it’s been predicted for over 45 years that i’ve been reading ( to hit more or less about now ).
prepare as best you can. the die was cast long ago. the peepul making the “ decisions “ back then figured they would be dead by now and some one else would have to worry about it.
there’s a continent full of peepul named some one else. more and more have been waking up. when the rest are forced to wake up, things will be the definition of interesting times.
About a decade ago, as I recall, Fred identified a politician as the embodiment of in-your-face American spiritual/intellectual/political/cultural decline: “the National Cockatoo.” The sobriquet revealed Fred’s native genius with understatement, identifying our now-2nd term Chief Executive gasbag as a 21st-century mountebank (which he is) and a possible reincarnation of the Pied Piper of Hamlin (not exactly – he actually seems to be one of the rats). For certain, under the baton of Bibi, as a member of his Symphony Orchestra, the “National Cockatoo” is definitely leading the U.S. lemmings to the cliff. Alas, too many Americans, even now, lack the discernment to wake up and smell the coffee.
There are three craters in Iran which, you may applaud or excoriate, shows he is more than a gasbag, but a man of action.
Dear Anonymous! Are the ‘3 craters’ you refer to Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan (?) and symbolic of your insipid and malicious sense of “action?” Those were actually the results of aggression by the Raucous Redhead which dramatize the faux stouthearted valor of a blovious armchair “Commander in Chief,” who -to help make Bibi great again- authorized the June 22nd “Operation Midnight Hammer” attack on three nuclear reactors in inoffensive Iran, without Congressional approval… chronicled by the Pentagon as the largest B-2 bomber strike in U.S. history…. reportedly deploying more than 125 aircraft, climaxing in 75 precision missile strikes (“craters”?) Arrogance and ignorance is timeless. Your man of action’s megalomania apparently knows no bounds. He is brother, barker, and toady to other international miscreants who govern the burlesque which has become our national culture.
‘But our religious faith in free enterprise’
Huh? Well on the way to Social Democracy, you mean?
‘China is a nation of engineers, America of lawyers. ‘
I would say lobbyists not lawyers, but point taken.
Having been married to a gorgeous Chinese gal, for umpteen-plus years, I’m willing to share with you a secret to their success, that Fred is overlooking. The secret is rather disturbing to those of us who like to sit on a porch in the idle dog days of summer, in the aimless pursuits like solving the world’s problems. The secret is that all of those placid and gorgeous Chinese wives, without exception, are fanatical workaholics who have no toleration for idleness. Zero toleration. If my wife caught me solving this national problem, she would immediately put me to work, moving a 2000+ lb rock, without power equipment (they also don’t like to waste money), that she believes is in the wrong place, to some location clear across the property where, puzzlingly, it properly belongs. That actually happened to me, .. it took me a 11 days to move it.
That’s so funny. Congrats. You have a brilliant wife.
My son spent a year in China when he was in his 20s. He came back wiser and concerned, for the same reasons you mention.
It’s now time for us old farts to sit on the porch with a margarita/mint julep/or libation of your choice to watch the fireworks, as the smug deniers wonder where the dollar went.
A principle driver is the fact that the USA is now the JUSA.
JUSA?
Statements like that stimulate thoughts to the effect that the problem here in the USA is that people with:
sh*t for brains
and
2000 year old hatreds
that were inspired
by long ago church elders such as Justin Martyr,
who were hustling for quick money,
such people exercise their constitutional rights spitting at productive Jews, rather than ever working to improve themselves.
Thank you Jesus.
I just sat down with my mid-morning tea, and voila! Some good reading from Fred. I have Chinese friends where I live. I get along well with them. As Fred mentions, there is something genetic in the makeup of most Chinese that propels them to practical accomplishment. The generational changes in China following the demise of the Chairman in 1976 cleared the way for a further revolution. I have not visited China, but have watched and read many articles and videos on the subject. The west is falling far behind, with medieval ideas and cultural traditions that currently are stifling progress. The whole “woke” thing has retrogressed all the advancements of the past 2 centuries in one fell swoop, so to speak. This will not fly in places like China.
I’ll make this short b/c you never reply…
We have FREEDOM; they DON’T.
Do we? Washington DC has sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
“Our people”? The only ones I see them going after are the illegals
We have freedom to be ignorant and lazy. Apparently they don’t.
Thank you. Exactly.
Good to have you back Fred… Always an interesting read.
Thanks
I think more highly of US and less highly of China than Fred but I like the critique as way to start a debate. We won’t and probably can’t at the decision maker level.
There’s one area where we lead China, the ability, willingness and political imperative to pretend.
Yes, we have freedom…the freedom to worship at the alter off government or not. Oh wait.
Fred: thanks for your work. Your observations on China make a lot of sense. As an American civil engineer, I can vouch for how difficult it is to get a project off the ground in this country.
Talking about freedom, here in Australia we live under no less than 30,000 yes THIRTY THOUSAND laws. However we manage to breathe without being imprisoned because virtually nobody knows what these laws are. On the other hand if the Govt. wants you out of the way they’ll dig up a few hundred laws that you’ve broken since you got out of bed this morning and bankrupt you so you’ll not bother them any more and just become another of the desired homeless. I’ve been to China and America and can say that America and Australia are just a tad below 3rd world status. Cynical??? Hell yes. And by the way I went everywhere I wanted in China unhindered.
I will say Australia started out as a penal island, from what you have said, I suggest it is moving back to that status.
The US has a higher quality of life and higher standard of living than China. One could argue that is because more of our national wealth is held by the people instead of by the government.
Agreed that our leaders are not as technically competent to spend on infrastructure and advanced technology, but compared to China our leaders are less able to pay for both.
Correction. The top 10%, especially the top 1%, have a higher quality of life. And even that is increasingly questionable! Have you visited Asia recently? I’d suggest you start with Singapore – firmly in the Western diaspora. You will be very surprised. Then move on to China when you are ready to be even more surprised!
Singapore is an example of restrictive civil rights, but open economic rights.
“The US has a higher quality of life and higher standard of living than China.”
Not across the board. The USA has an increasingly sharp income divide.
There’s a lot of money in the U.S., or at least there used to be. It’s being raided as we speak. With their skyrocketing GDP, I don’t think Chinese will suffer from standard of living. There are poor farmers, but working people there have money, although they probably live by a different standard. I assume it’s workable. Maybe we have too much? Nevertheless, the U.S. will become a country for the wealthy with servants willing to stay here.
I have lived in Asia for 50 years (having seen the future very early as a result of longhaul business trips to the Region) and have visited or had business experience in every Asian country, including China. So with some degree of insight, I can confirm that every word of this essay is absolutely 100% correct. It should be compulsory reading for everyone in the West because such heresy will never grace the pages of Western MSM.
Just to add one more strategic issue hinted at in the essay – the education system. Chinese kids work hard. Very hard. They study, including out of school, very long hours so as to have a chance of being selected to enter the best higher education, where they will be graded, selected and groomed for leadership positions in their respective fields of endeavor purely on the basis of merit. No DEI or other wokery in China, they don’t have time for it because they are too busy producing.
Great to have you back with us Fred!
Two points Fred, one smaller for purposes of your essay, and one bigger that you’ve made no reference to. The first is I see you haven’t changed in regards to your anti-Israel silliness (…”armed and protected Israel’s massacre of Palestinians…”) that you’ve occasionally slipped in for decades. (It’s long been my only real disappointment in you and I’ve been reading you for well over 40 years.) The bigger and far more relevant point is China has been having substantial economic problems. I don’t pretend to know if these problems are real and major or smaller issues that most economies have, some more than others. But for some semblance of balance, you should address those.
Not just anti-Israel, but also somewhat anti-Ukraine. Trump has prolonged the war by refusing to aid the Ukrainians, and seems to be a Russian asset. A moody one, who flip=flops, but still a Russian asset.
I live in Poland and know a number of Ukrainians, some arrived after 2014, others are refugees who arrived here in 2022. None of them want the Russians around, what with Putin threatening a Slavonic version of the Final Solution.
The feeling in Poland is that, if the Russians are not stopped in the Ukraine, they will turn up in Poland. Given that Poland was devastated in WW2. they are not exactly keen for a repeat, but they also know that main killing came after Poland surrendered.
You seem to own the “anti-Israel silliness,” personally, Andy. Actually, the Zionist state of your insinuation is “Israel” only in a political sense, neither in its historic Biblical signification [the 10 northern tribes (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph [i.e., Ephraim/Manasseh], nor the two-tribed Southern Kingdom [Judah and Benjamin], or both…… and it certainly is not representative of Israel in its current religious appellation (Jews or Judaism).
Good essay, but one correction:
> Since 1830 it has started only two wars, the annexation of Tibet and a short war with Vietnam in 1979.
You’ve omitted China’s recent conquest of the South China Sea, with only minimal combat, sometimes involving water cannons.
I lived in Japan from 1980 to 1994 and saw a lot of Japanese companies. I did not see any factories, but got descriptions from people who had. Evidently they had newer and better equipment, and also workers who were more educated, skilled and motivated than US or UK workers. I have seen UK industry go down the drain, what with militant unions, jobsworth workers, a lack of QC, and financial management that aimed for short-term profits,. Not unlike the situation in the USA, I gather.
Japanese offices were amazing. Full of smoke and people, they seemed to be a job creation scheme. Especially for the girls (not many women in the offices, they were expected to leave when they got married), it was very rare for a woman to make a career, although I met a few. My impression was that office efficiency in Japan was probably less than half that of the West. Much less use of technology, back then.
I spent three years in a Japanese software company. I got the impression that their programming was solid, but unimaginative. Apart from games, of course. I wonder if it is a sign of things that the company was taken over by a Chinese company some time after I left Japan?
One thing about Japan and China, and that is the dedication to education. That has two sides; the academic level is very high, but so is the pressure to succeed. Many go to cram schools after school or at the weekends. Then they go into a job in which they 12 or more hours a day and hardly see their families. I heard about the resulting social dysfunction, a more recent manifestation of that being young people who live alone and like hermits and never go out. There is a Japanese name for it, which I do not know offhand. The same thing appears in South Korea, and I would be very surprised if it does not occur in China as well.
China benevolent and pacifist? The nice new infrastructure is great, but can come with strings. At least one or two of the ports that the Chinese operate for the locals has caused uproar among the locals for various abuses, which is why places such as Hamburg that had an offer from the Chinese are wondering if it would be wise.
As for pacifist, I seem to recall talk from the Chinese about invading Taiwan in 2027. Stay tuned.
The Japanese name is, sōshoku-kei, which means Herbivore men.
I think the name is actually hikkikomori (shut-in)
A Great essay Fred…. So Glad to have you back with us! You present a lot of truth here as always.
My wife and I spent three weeks in China some 13 years ago. What a Great trip! We traveled the country extensively by bus through rural country side and a few flights. We could not believe the lack of any farming machinery seen on the very small farms – probably only saw one or two powered tractors in all. In a very rural area at which we stopped on a detour, we found large amounts of handmade patties of animal dung placed on fences to dry in the sun and later used for heating fuel for the winter.
While buildings in the larger cities were impressive, the bad smog and pollution restricted visibility very badly – the tops of some buildings remained in the haze. The three Gorges Dam project displaced some 1.3 million people to live in high rise very small apartment buildings with no elevators. Not people friendly…..
We found the liquor to be absolutely horrible. While the rice beer was very good we found most of the food to be substandard to that of America. We were happy to get home after our trip to get some “real Chinese food” We think the “Real China” was mostly hidden from us.
Yes, China has one great history — obvious if you have ever taken the forced march from Tiananmen Square through the previous Dynasties. Moreover, China has captured (or stolen) the lead on many important industries but America with our faults mainly from Liberal Leftists, I think provides a greater model for living free in a clean environment with individual opportunity than does China.
I look for the Trumpster to lead us out of the holes dug by Obama and Biden to greater American heights that will surpass China in most every respect. Donald Trump hopefully rebalance the out of kilter of world power.
After China invades and tries to take back Taiwan…. It will be a different show in every respect.
–JB
Oh my, your response is a bit tilted. Yes, that was China 13 years ago, and more. But their GDP has skyrocketed in the past 10 years. They have dealt with their smog problem and are racing ahead with alternative energy. I don’t think your take on “Liberal Leftists” and Obama and Biden are correct. America has made great strides but also has made mistakes. This administration is taking it apart. All of our advances in the past have been made possible with the help of government projects and research. Trump and the Republicans are stripping science and research projects, and turning America into a country for the wealthy only with servants who are willing to suck up and stay here.
As someone who was born in Hong Kong to parents who fled mainland China after the Communists took power, I have never even realized that there is a narrative that China annexed Tibet. I lived in Hong Kong for nineteen years before moving to the United States, and never have I read anything or heard anyone say anything that suggests Tibet was not part of China while growing up in Hong Kong. I suppose that at one point, Tibet was not part of China, just as Guangdong at one point was not part of China. But the annexation of Tibet was certainly not done by the Communists. The Communist sending in its troops to Tibet in 1951 is a reassertion of Chinese sovereignty after years of lapse in control rather than an invasion, as is often characterized by the Western media. The Western media’s portrayal of the event as an invasion is either ignorant or dishonest.
The first time I realized that there was a narrative of the Chinese invasion of Tibet was in 2008, during the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. At that time, there was a campaign by Western political activists protesting the ‘Chinese invasion of Tibet’. The internet was already well-established at the time, and I have since conducted extensive research on the subject, which has not altered my opinion.
My complaint about the Chinese Communists regarding Tibet is not that it invades Tibet, but that, under its watch, part of Tibet was gobbled up by India. In February 1951, India annexed Tawang in South Tibet. Tawang is the birthplace of the Sixth Dalai Lama and home to a four-hundred-year-old Tibetan monastery. Immediately, the Tibetan Lhasa government protested to India, and so did the Nationalist government of the Republic of China, by then had already retreated to Taiwan after its defeat in the civil war. Curiously, Communist China made no noise. At that time, the current Dalai Lama had already assumed power from the regents who ran the Lhasa government when he attained adulthood. The people in mainland China today are ignorant that South Tibet (so-called Arunachal Pradesh by India) was carved out from China under the Communists’ watch. They assumed that this loss of territory was from the Qing dynasty, and the Chinese Communist Party has no intention to correct this misunderstanding for good reasons. If the Western government wants to embarrass the Chinese Communist Party and make it look bad in front of its people, making the people in mainland China learn about this truth is a good start.
Westerners may not know, but this ‘China invaded Tibet’ narrative is totally oblivious to the Chinese of all political persuasions (from diehard Communist to diehard anti-Communist) anywhere who don’t pay attention to the Western media. Had I not immigrated to the United States, I would probably never have known.
I thought you retired. Anyhow , good to have you back Mr. Reed.
After taking in the different learned positions from the Left, Right and Center I am mindful of a term I herd for the first time in the mid 70s….. “Mental Masturbation”….. All these positions can fall into nothing powered by an earthquake here or a super volcano there or some mouth breathing moron dropping a vile in a research lab somewhere… one never knows…. really.
[…] https://fredoneverything.org/on-the-road-to-ruin-fasten-seatbelts […]
Great insight Fred. Thanks for coming back!!
To suggest, as poor Fred does, that “our religious faith in free enterprise… isn’t working”, requires some careful rhetorical unpacking. It is true that religious faith doesn’t work because faith means believing what you were told to believe rather than engaging in the unpopular effort of critical thinking.
But further, a belief that we live under a regime of free enterprise would indeed require an industrial-strength dose of blind faith since, according to any dictionary in the world, we clearly struggle under a regime of nearly totalitarian fascism, where the rich and powerful work together to rule and rob everyone else. That’s the direct opposite of free enterprise which has never actually been tried in America.
Government is a gang of parasites running an extortion racket called taxation and a counterfeiting racket called monetary policy where central planning cancels property rights. Alexander Hamilton was the first Fascist. Our problems aren’t recent.
I don’t do psychology so I can’t say whether Fred is being stupid, ignorant or just rhetorically sloppy, but for his own good, I am reporting him to the DHR (Dept of Homeland Rhetoric). Grow up, Fred.
I don’t always agree with Fred, but your characterization comes off as extreme to me.
Some of what you wrote is correct and I agree, but the rest is hogwash. You need some coffee or something.
“But further, a belief that we live under a regime of free enterprise would indeed require an industrial-strength dose of blind faith since, according to any dictionary in the world, we clearly struggle under a regime of nearly totalitarian fascism, where the rich and powerful work together to rule and rob everyone else. That’s the direct opposite of free enterprise which has never actually been tried in America.
Government is a gang of parasites running an extortion racket called taxation and a counterfeiting racket called monetary policy where central planning cancels property rights.”
Seems right. Agree.
Alexander Hamilton was the first Fascist. Our problems aren’t recent.
“I don’t do psychology so I can’t say whether Fred is being stupid, ignorant or just rhetorically sloppy, but for his own good, I am reporting him to the DHR (Dept of Homeland Rhetoric). Grow up, Fred.”
Pedantic. Silly. Fred is not far from what you wrote yourself.
[…] https://fredoneverything.org/on-the-road-to-ruin-fasten-seatbelts […]
While I agree with your criticism of America, China has their own self-inflicted problems. Such as entire ghost cities. Per Grok:
China’s phenomenon of “ghost cities” stems from aggressive urban development and infrastructure overbuilding, driven by economic policies prioritizing rapid growth, often outpacing actual demand. These are newly constructed urban areas—complete with residential complexes, commercial centers, and infrastructure like roads and rail lines—that remain largely unoccupied or underutilized. Below is a detailed look at the causes, scale, specific examples, and broader implications of this issue.
Causes of Overbuilding and Ghost Cities
Economic Growth Model: China’s GDP growth has heavily relied on infrastructure and real estate, contributing 25–30% to GDP in peak years (2000s–2010s). Local governments, incentivized to boost GDP, borrowed heavily to fund massive projects, often without sufficient demand analysis.
Land Sales and Debt: Local governments generate revenue by leasing land to developers, creating a cycle of overbuilding to sustain budgets. By 2025, local government debt exceeds 100 trillion yuan (~$14 trillion), much tied to real estate and infrastructure.
Speculative Investment: Property in China is a primary investment vehicle due to limited alternatives. Developers and buyers purchased units expecting future demand, inflating construction without immediate occupancy.
Urbanization Push: The government aimed to urbanize 60% of its population by 2020 (achieved) and 70% by 2030, prompting preemptive city-building in less populated regions.
Policy Miscalculations: Central planning often overestimated migration and industrial growth in second- and third-tier cities, leading to infrastructure (e.g., high-speed rail, airports) and housing far exceeding current needs.
Scale of Ghost Cities
Estimating the exact number of ghost cities is challenging due to varying definitions (e.g., occupancy rates below 50%, vacant commercial zones). However, reports suggest:
Number of Affected Areas: Around 50–70 urban developments have been labeled “ghost cities” at some point, though some have gained population over time.
Vacant Housing: China has ~65 million empty housing units, enough to house 200 million people, based on 2020 estimates. Vacancy rates in some cities exceed 30%.
Geographic Spread: Most ghost cities are in second- and third-tier cities, particularly in western and central provinces (e.g., Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Yunnan), where population density and economic activity are lower.
Notable Examples
Ordos (Kangbashi District), Inner Mongolia:
Built in the early 2000s to house 1 million, it was designed as a showcase city funded by coal wealth.
By 2010, it had ~20,000 residents, with vast empty apartment blocks and plazas.
Status in 2025: Occupancy has risen to ~100,000, but still far below capacity; some areas remain deserted.
Yujiapu Financial District, Tianjin:
Modeled as a “Manhattan of China” with skyscrapers for financial firms.
By 2015, many buildings were empty; occupancy remains low despite incentives.
Zhengdong New Area, Zhengzhou:
Planned for 1.5 million, it featured grand civic buildings but had low residency in the 2010s.
By 2025, it has grown to ~500,000 residents, but commercial zones lag.
Dantu, Jiangsu:
A new city with capacity for 200,000; by 2018, it had ~10% occupancy.
Slow growth persists due to limited job opportunities.
Nanhui New City (Lingang), Shanghai:
Built for 800,000 by 2020, it had ~100,000 residents by 2018.
Tesla’s Gigafactory and policy incentives have boosted growth, but it’s still underpopulated.
Related Infrastructure Overbuilding
Ghost cities often tie to overbuilt infrastructure, like underused high-speed rail (HSR) lines and airports:
HSR Lines: ~10–16 of China’s 76 HSR lines run at critically low capacity (e.g., <40% occupancy), especially in western regions like Lanzhou–Xinjiang or Guiyang–Guangzhou. These were built to connect new urban zones, but demand hasn’t materialized.
Airports: Of China’s 250+ airports, ~80% operate at a loss, with many in smaller cities seeing fewer than 500,000 passengers annually (e.g., Huizhou, Guangdong: 10,000 passengers/year vs. 2 million capacity).
Roads and Bridges: Thousands of kilometers of highways and bridges serve minimal traffic in ghost city regions, e.g., Ordos’s sprawling road network.
Current Status and Trends
Partial Recovery: Some ghost cities, like Zhengdong and parts of Ordos, have seen population growth due to government incentives (e.g., free rent, job programs) and natural urbanization. By 2025, ~20% of ghost cities are no longer "ghostly," though they remain below planned capacity.
Economic Risks: Unoccupied properties contribute to a property bubble, with developers like Evergrande collapsing under $300 billion in debt. The real estate sector’s slowdown has cut China’s growth to ~4.5% in 2025.
Policy Shifts: Since 2021, China has tightened approvals for new HSR and urban projects, requiring 80% utilization of existing infrastructure first. The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) emphasizes sustainable urbanization over blind expansion.
Future Outlook: By 2035, China aims for 70% urbanization, potentially filling some ghost cities, but rural-to-urban migration is slowing, and high costs deter relocation to remote areas.
Implications
Economic Waste: Ghost cities and related infrastructure represent trillions in sunk costs, with maintenance draining local budgets.
Social Impact: Empty cities strain social cohesion, with displaced farmers and low-income residents often unable to afford new urban housing.
Global Lessons: China’s case highlights risks of top-down urban planning without demand-driven growth, though some argue long-term urbanization will justify the investment.
China’s ghost cities reflect a bold but flawed bet on future growth. While some areas are slowly populating, the economic and social costs of overbuilding remain a cautionary tale. For further details, sources like the World Bank or Chinese economic journals provide deeper data, though official statistics can be opaque.
A perfect example of a planned economy…
There are a number of men on You Tube that spent many years in Red China and can speak authoritatively on the rot in China that sits, mostly, on the shoulders of the corrupt CCP. Serpentza is one example. He married a Chinese girl adn got out of China while the getting was good. He lost motorcycles while on trips around China. Simply seized by the Police because they could.
China is not doing well and wasted masses of money building cities that are mostly, if not entirely, unoccupied. It is wasting masses of money on a military it really doesn’t need because it is under no external threat. Its attempt to seize the South China Sea is of a piece with the nonsense Xi wants to push. It is not doing China any good to try to bully its neighbors.
By the bye, Putin’s war is not a proxy war. Putin started it for reasons of empire and has done nothing but weaken and savage his country economically.
I claim the CCP is not so corrupt as incompetent.
As you can see from the comments, most of us are hopelessly uneducated. That means we should go back to sipping coffee and doing puzzles and stay out of the comment section.
Good to have you back. Enjoy your columns.
You are definitely on to something. Americans are inventors and individual autonomy and exploration is part pf our culture. It is not an accident that the telephone, automobile, airplane and supercomputers were first made in the USA. China and Japan, by contrast, are not inventors, but they are awfully good at taking existing technology and making it better and more efficiently. Some of this is due to their political system, which I would never choose to live under, and much more to their culture.