Perfectly livable, but also many ghost towns, shopping malls and ghost airports - gigantic infrastructure projects that have been vacant for years. The Chinese authorities announce that these facilities are being built "for growth" and sooner or later they will be filled with people, clerks, passengers or tenants.

At the same time, the government artificially "accelerates" the economy - similar projects(this also includes roads that few people drive on, warehouses filled to capacity with copper or aluminum) add 1-1.5 percentage points to the annual GDP growth rate.

The ghost town of Ordos in Inner Mongolia began to be built in 2003. Despite the fact that in this province the Mongols make up only about 17%, it was decided to build the city in the Mongolian style (hence its name, associated with the word "horde").

As a result, by 2010, a city designed for 1 million people was built on an area of 355 square kilometers (by the way, the population density in it is 4 times less than in Moscow - this is by the way that even overpopulated China can afford to build spacious cities , but this is a topic for a separate article). However, by the end of 2013, Ordos was only 2% populated - 20,000 people live in it.

The main investor-developer in 2008-09 set housing prices here at 10-11 thousand dollars per square meter. m, today they have fallen almost 2-3 times - up to 4-4.5 thousand dollars. However, these prices are unbearable for the vast majority of residents of the province of Inner Mongolia, where the average salary is 400-500 dollars.

Part of the empty squares in Ordos is going to be bought by the Chinese government for retired military men, but there will be no more than 20-25 thousand people here (that is, another 2-2.5% of the city's population compared to the current 2%).

All these years after the commissioning of facilities, management companies are forced to incur losses while maintaining the infrastructure empty city-ghost - repair, street cleaning, security, street lighting, landscaping, etc. - and this is up to 10-12 million dollars a month. This money was allocated to the developer by Chinese state-owned banks in the form of a loan at a low interest rate.

The Ordos project itself was launched in the Kangbashi region after huge reserves of coal and other minerals were discovered here. The area was instantly built up with office skyscrapers, civic centers, government buildings, museums, theaters, and sports facilities. Many sleeping areas were also erected with beautiful cozy mansions for middle-class people.

The only problem is that this area was meant to be inhabited by 1 million inhabitants, and now almost no one lives there. With the rate of settlement as it is now, the ghost town of Ordos will be fully populated in 40-50 years.

Dubai is an incredible city. Once it was just a patch of desert, of interest only to a modest number of merchants. Now the city is huge, and much of what is in it is also incredible and extravagant. Its success inspired other countries to try to create something similar. But few have done it as badly as China.

A bit of history

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Chinese government decided to bring the luxury and splendor of Dubai to Inner Mongolia. On an empty stretch of the Gobi Desert, it was decided to build a cultural, economic and political center. It erected magnificent buildings designed by eminent architects. There appeared world-class libraries, stadiums, museums. The name of this city is Ordos, and it has become a huge failure.

Why is the city not inhabited

The problem was that creating new version Dubai in the middle of the desert turned out to be very costly. Initially, the costs were planned to be covered by funds from the development of coal deposits located nearby. However, the calculations turned out to be incorrect - most of the mines turned out to be unprofitable and were closed. Therefore, in order to somehow justify the investment in the construction of Ordos City, the government raised the price of real estate in the city. The apartments here turned out to be so expensive that only Shanghai could compete with them in terms of the cost of moving. The citizens of China decided that spending all the funds raised in a lifetime to move to a ghost town is not very a good idea. Moreover, the closure of the mines put an end to profitable employment. As a result, Ordos stood completely empty for about a decade. Even today it is very sparsely populated and looks more like construction site than a metropolis.

How to live in a ghost town

1. The first thing that catches your eye is the unusually clean streets. Despite the low population, utilities work perfectly. And there is especially no one to litter - the population of the city does not exceed 100,000 people. There is no vandalism as a phenomenon in the city.

2. Empty buses run along deserted streets. At bus stops, even during peak hours, there is not a soul.

3. Lack of population does not prevent the development of local infrastructure. The city has a tourist office and bike rentals.

4. In some places, the city resembles an abandoned construction site - some of the buildings remained unfinished and surrounded by scaffolding.

5. Huge malls are empty, only a small part of the retail space is occupied. In order to save money, lighting does not work everywhere.

6. A monument to Genghis Khan was erected in Ordos. According to legend, the ruler visited this area and was so touched by the landscape that he called this place a piece of paradise.

Despite the fact that China is considered the most overpopulated region in the world, there is a huge city in which no one wants to live. No living, no business. But a lot of money was spent on the construction of this Chinese metropolis, but the city still frightens with its emptiness. What is the reason for this? According to some information from tourists, about 50% of China's territory is empty due to the fact that they do not want to live there. The Chinese do not like the cold, and the climate in Ordos is not very good. What will the Chinese government come up with to attract permanent place residence of their heat-loving citizens?

Now a question for backfilling. So what then attracts the heat-loving Chinese to our Siberia? Or maybe the size of China is greatly exaggerated to intimidate the Russians? A well-known case, one of the types of lies is statistics.

“Post from the past”: Ordos in China is a modern ghost town. The Kangbashi area, designed for more than a million inhabitants, remains deserted even five years after the start of construction. Photo by Michael Christopher Brown.

1.The construction of the Kangbashi district began as part of a government project in Ordos, a city located in the province of Inner Mongolia, whose source of wealth is coal mining. The area is built up office buildings, administrative centers, government agencies, museums, theaters and sports grounds, as well as residential areas. But there is one problem. In an area designed for more than a million inhabitants, almost no one still lives.

2. Despite the fact that most of the real estate has already been purchased and it was planned that by 2010 the area would be populated, Kangbashi is still empty.

3. Most of the one and a half million population of Ordos considers Dunsheng their home, located half an hour from the empty Kangbashi.

4. Two workers clean up the area around the public library building. The per capita income in Ordos is the second highest in the country after Shanghai.

5. Treasury. Workers carry pieces of Styrofoam up the stairs leading to the Ordos Museum, which is still unfinished.

6. Monument. A pedestrian walks down the street behind a giant sculpture depicting two horses in Linyuynli Square, Kangbashi district.

7. Desert highway. View of empty houses.

8. There is a complete lack of business in the city. A pedestrian walks past empty shopping areas. Almost none of the companies wanted to move to a new area.

9. Oppressive silence. The streets are deserted even in the morning, when residents have to go to work.

10. Construction of new facilities in Kangbashi continues despite the fact that the area is not populated.

11. An elderly man pushes a cart while crossing a road separating completed buildings from those still under construction.

12. Construction in progress. Workers are chasing the walls of a future shopping center for non-existent residents of an apartment complex.

The largest ghost town is in China (video)

On the pages of this site, you could already see a large collection of various abandoned places and, but you have not yet seen such a huge one as Ordos. Unfortunately, over time, they do not become smaller, but on the contrary - cities, settlements, villages, which are called a terrible word - ghosts, are becoming more and more every day. Despite the fact that most of these places look really deplorable and even depressing, such abandoned places, like a magnet, attract people's attention.

Ordos is a city in China. It is impossible to say 100% that this is a completely extinct ghost town. No, there are residents here, but there are so few of them in such vast areas filled with multi-storey buildings that even at the height of the weekend summer day it is very difficult to see even one passer-by here. The city looks like after some kind of ecological disaster. New houses stand untouched by anyone, and there is not even garbage on the streets.

The history of the area and the ghost town began with the discovery of mineral deposits here in 2003. The Chinese authorities bought the city, made a huge cash injection, as a result of which many houses, enterprises, various institutions, schools, parks, squares, architectural structures, monuments, etc. small town turned into a huge metropolis. However, despite the good investment, there were very few people who wanted to settle here. Even modern campaigns that are aimed at settling Ordos do not give the desired result. The population of the city is 17.8 people per 1 square kilometer. Such a density is typical only for remote areas of the taiga, steppes or tundra.

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We continue to replenish our rubric Known to everyone on the Internet, but no less interesting topic. China continues to implement giant growth projects, thereby stimulating its economy at the same time. In Inner Mongolia, the city of Ordos was built, designed for 1 million people. Now 20 thousand people live in it, 98% of the buildings are empty.

Let's find out more about it...

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As a rule, their history is similar to each other:

A mineral deposit was found somewhere, a city was built around it, which provided millions of people with well-paid jobs. This would have continued for many years, but sooner or later the deposit came to an end. All minerals have been extracted, and the city's economy has declined at a catastrophic rate. Residents dispersed in search of a better life. Since then, the city has been looking at the world with empty eye sockets of windows, gradually overgrown with trees, which will soon completely swallow the city.

But, that's the rule, so that there would be exceptions to it. And in the exceptions we have a district Kangabashi (Kangabashi) Chinese city Ordos (Ordos). Ordos, in translation sounds like "Palace complex" and this name, in my opinion, is symbolic. Why - a little lower. In fact, this is the most ordinary ghost town, but with one very remarkable difference - this city is in the list of the richest cities in China ... in second place !!! It yields only to Shanghai, and behind Ordos is the capital of China - Beijing.
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The city of Ordos in the province of Inner Mongolia began to be built in 2003. Despite the fact that in this province the Mongols make up only about 17%, it was decided to build the city in the Mongolian style (hence its name, associated with the word "Horde").

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All these 3-5 years after the commissioning of facilities, management companies are forced to incur losses while maintaining the infrastructure of an empty city - repairs, street cleaning, security, street lighting, landscaping, etc. - and this is up to 10-12 million dollars a month. This money was allocated to the developer by Chinese state-owned banks in the form of a loan at a low interest rate. With the rate of settlement as it is now, Ordos will be fully populated in 40-50 years.

Here is what they write on the Internet: with a population of 1.5 million people, the GDP here is 14.5 thousand dollars per capita. How did this happen?

Very little is said about this place, and as a result, you may get confused in the numbers, since everywhere it is indicated that the population of Ordos is one and a half million people. This is actually true, but this population lives in the old Ordos, but here we are talking about a huge area called New Ordos, which began to be built after the discovery of rich mineral deposits here

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In 2003, huge deposits of minerals were discovered in this area ( remember the preamble?) According to experts, 1/6 of coal reserves and 1/3 of natural gas, from all currently known Chinese deposits. Truly a huge number. The city also concentrates electricity generation and building materials, textile industry, petrochemical enterprises, etc. As expected, the government could not resist the temptation to start generously financing the development of this area

As a result, the city grew from a small settlement into a huge, theoretically, metropolis ... The government, during the investment, conducted a lot of propaganda that private individuals would invest in buildings, acquiring them as property. However, there were very few people who wanted to settle in this city. As a result, it turned out that almost the entire purchased city turned out to be almost empty.

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To this day, no amount of persuasion and propaganda can force the people of China to change their minds. This one, the second economic development the city remains one of the most sparsely populated in the world. The population density in Ordos is 17.8 people per square kilometer. For comparison, in Moscow this figure is 10,000 per km2, in St. Petersburg - 3,200 per km2. Less, probably only in the tundra?

Modern houses, wide avenues, squares and squares were designed by the best architects, but people are in no hurry to move to new homes: there are no shops, cinemas and even offices in the city. Those few residents of the city who live here, almost alone, enjoy not only desert landscapes, but also modern architectural complexes, futuristic buildings.

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Kangbashi is still waiting for its inhabitants, who sooner or later will fill the city, because the population of China is the largest on planet Earth

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In many respects, the city of Ordos can be considered an example of successful development. Nearby there are large deposits of coal and gas, the economy is developing rapidly, real estate prices are rising by leaps and bounds. In a modern city, there is only one thing missing - people.

Traffic lights work everywhere, but there are no pedestrians, and a rare car reaches the center of Ordos. According to the plan, 500,000 Chinese should live here. In fact, the new quarters are empty. Not because people left them. They have never been inhabited. On the other hand, a monument has been erected opposite the city hall - a subject of special pride for a few citizens. “These beautiful horses are a symbol of our mighty development. Now no one can keep up with Ordos,” says Ma Sin, a resident of the city of Ordos.

According to Ma Xing, an employee of the mayor's office, luxury housing is sold in bulk here. Therefore, all square meters dispersed before the start of construction. Residents of other provinces bought - who is the second, and who is the third apartment, under a sparing mortgage loan - 4% per annum.

“They came in large numbers, bought and do not live. And we have problems with utilities. They save water - they give it in the evenings. And gas problems. The meter does not turn on,” said Ma Shuilian, a resident of the city of Ordos.

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Mr Ma uninvited guest glad. When the heating does not work, the indigenous Ordos, and there are no more than a thousand of them, look for a house where it is still available. And there - a feast and the traditional question: why does the country need such cities? “Either these are plans for a great migration from our megacities, the ecology of which is about to collapse, or a gigantic theft of budget money,” said Ma Sin, a resident of the city of Ordos.

While the townsfolk are trying to explain what is happening, the deputies of the Chinese Parliament are talking about the phenomenon of the Chinese economy. The pace of urbanization here is, to say the least, surprising. The same Ordos appeared in just 6 years. And the work is still going on. “This policy has existed for many years, but only now we are talking about the threat of a mortgage bubble,” notes independent expert Fei Zhongzhen.

According to official statistics, there are already more than a dozen such deserted cities in China. And the demand for a second or third apartment is growing. Just like the prices. They are only available to a select few.

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“If I were a millionaire, I would serve as an example for everyone. I would buy square meter ordinary housing" - this song is considered seditious by the authorities. And you can't find it on the internet. The popular hit here is performed in doorways. “We sing that the youth is doomed to wander. It's no joke: to save up for an apartment, we have to work for 100 years, ”says student, songwriter Wei Xingcun.

How long the Ordos will be empty, they don’t even undertake to predict local authorities. But experts have calculated: if in 10 years ghost towns do not solve the problem of unsustainable prices and excess real estate, China's mortgage lending will collapse. And from it, as world experience shows, to the strongest economic crisis is just a step.

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