Baidu Data Research Reveals China's Ghost Cities (thestack.com) 109
An anonymous reader writes: Chinese web services giant, Baidu, has embarked on a new study in which it uses location information from users' mobile devices, as well as mapping and building data, to identify areas with high volumes of construction with relatively low population densities — known as 'ghost cities.' The researchers, in the published findings Ghost Cities: Analysis Based on Positioning Data in China, were able to discount areas which experienced high levels of tourism which skew the figures in peak seasons. The Baidu Big Data team discovered 50 ghost cities, although only 20 of these were revealed in the report to avoid potential harm to the real estate market in these areas.
Ghostly! (Score:5, Funny)
Living in a ghost city gives me fast enough internet to get first post.
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-1 sucky meter.
Re: Ghostly! (Score:1)
Home for refugees? (Score:4, Interesting)
How about relocating Syrian refugees into these unused housing units?
There are no jobs for the Chinese there (Score:5, Insightful)
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By "the 70s" and "Reagan", you probably mean the 50's and the Department of Housing under the LBJ administration [wikipedia.org]. If anyone tried it after that, they had no excuse.
Re:There are no jobs for the Chinese there (Score:4, Informative)
LBJ wasn't in office 'til the 60's. And the parks directory of NYC shares much of the blame, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Regan wasn't elected until the '80s, and I'd find it hard to give him credit for the perpetual spiral of poverty, that's been a hallmark of American Democracy since forever. The land of Equal Opportunity - well, except for those kids with rich parents, they get more equal opportunities than the rest.
The 80s is when the projects went to hell (Score:2)
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it's also when all the social programs got defunded
Bullshit. No housing project ever succeeded. Now days they try to mix Section 8 housing into otherwise good communities, which results in nothing but increased crime. I've seen it first hand.
Which is a huge shame, since Section 8 (the way it was originally intended) should be one of the most successful welfare programs in US history, and one any conservative could get behind.
The original section 8 families were carefully screened and selected to find people who didn't want a hand out, but a hand up, with the intent of getting them out of bad neighborhoods and into an environment they could thrive. It was wildly successful in achieving its aims, and was actually a fairly inexpensive program. I
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I'm inclined to blame the Republicans
This is decidedly unhelpful, and is part of the reason that we can't have nice things.
Oddly enough, everything related to Section 8, from inception until the present day, happened under a republican president with a democratic congress
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If that was their goal they wouldn't be throwing fits about being put in cities that aren't 'big enough', they would have sold their fancy smartphones to get another family member with them, and they would basically be behaving like people grateful to not live in fear for their lives rather than bratty teenagers that get a BLACK Ferrari instead of a RED one.
Stupid is as stupid posts (Score:1)
If your theory is correct, then why didn't these dirt poor freeloaders move out of the Middle East say, five years ago? Why aren't there hundreds of millions of poor people constantly trying to move to richer countries? They aren't.
Turn in your trolling merit badge, are terrible at it.
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It does beg the question why they don't stop as soon as they are out of immediate peril, like in Turkey or Greece.
Sure, if you're escaping a hellhole you want to make sure to end up someplace nice, but it does seem like there's a bit of opportunism there, taking advantage of the sense of peril to make sure you do end up someplace nice.
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Re:Home for refugees? (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't looking for housing, they are looking for socialist freebies in the (still) richer part of Europe.
So you've uprooted your family to escape a really awful war zone and now need a new place to live, you have two options.
1) Stop in a country with a poor and fairly zenophobic population and very few people who share your religion or culture.
2) Stop in a country with a richer and less zenophobic population and communities of people who share your religion or culture.
Of course they're fleeing to the richer parts of Europe where some Muslims already live, they're rational people who want them and their children to have good lives, why wouldn't they? Would you really settle in a poor country if you were in their position?
As for settling them in the Chinese ghost cities they'd be put in a very difficult position without other people who shared their culture or language and living in a country who doesn't really know how to deal with immigrant populations, it probably wouldn't be their first choice.
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Of course they're fleeing to the richer parts of Europe where some Muslims already live, they're rational people who want them and their children to have good lives, why wouldn't they?
This sounds nice, but the reality is that there is a queue of people on the French border trying to get smuggle themselves into the UK. Any argument for asylum evaporates if France isn't good enough for you.
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Of course they're fleeing to the richer parts of Europe where some Muslims already live, they're rational people who want them and their children to have good lives, why wouldn't they?
This sounds nice, but the reality is that there is a queue of people on the French border trying to get smuggle themselves into the UK. Any argument for asylum evaporates if France isn't good enough for you.
I assume they're trying to get into England from France for the same reason other people might want to be in England instead of France, maybe they have relatives there, or maybe they just speak English.
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they're rational people who want them and their children to have good lives, why wouldn't they?
"Wanting" isn't enough. They left their children behind to seek handouts in Europe. These "refugees" are the first in history to have a majority of men and few to no families among them.
Wrong [factcheck.org]
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From the website you linked:
51 percent are Syrian. The rest have come mainly from nine other countries. Most of these refugees and migrants have been men — 72 percent
So 49% are definitely not from Syria and 72% of the total (Syrians and non-Syrians) are men. Syrians should have more women among them, so almost all non-Syrians "refugees" are men.
And also from the website I linked:
But his comment that “the majority of them are young males” is contradicted by the best data available on the Syrian refugees’ demographics.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees — which refers refugees for resettlement in other countries — says there are more than 4 million registered Syrian refugees. Its figures on the demographic makeup of refugees is based on available data on the 2.1 million who were registered by the UNHCR in
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NK ones when Kim Jong Un goes to far (Score:2)
NK ones when Kim Jong Un goes to far and they all rush the border.
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The primary way for Chinese people to legally invest money is to buy property, so many of these units go to property speculators trying to earn a return. Also, China plans far in advance, and the people have been moving from the country to the cities at an amazing rate there, so they are taking the long view and building housing for the boom that has been ongoing for decades. They won't always be ghost cities, but currently no one lives there.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great... [reuters.com]
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They're dispersal sites in case it looks like the cans of instant sunshine are going to start flying.
(The cities I mean, not the sodding sheds.)
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The Chinese government is trying to run a command economy (Communism).
Building shit nobody wants or needs at grate expense is one of the more common problems with command economies, as you get the government deciding what to build and where and the people who make the decision have no incentive to care more about the demand for those buildings than who's pockets get lined in the building of them.
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Every major company in the world desires a command economy; "buy our product even if it is crap", e.g. MS.
This is allowed? (Score:3)
Is anyone else surprised that Baidu was willing and able to conduct and publish this study without intervention from the Chinese government?
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And also, why is Baidu interested in this information?
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Just Google some:
http://www.dailybrainfreeze.co... [dailybrainfreeze.com]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... [dailymail.co.uk]
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Shenzhen was built when Zheng Xiaoping began modernize China, with the help of USA. There was with plenty of opportunity to develop at this time, when China was likely built from the ground up. But now, it's easy to build city, but it's much harder to create social services, move to the businesses, etc, to the newly city.
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As I pointed out, Shenzhen was the first, and the only special economic zone at this time, may be everyone wanted to go there.
I remember in old Oxford Headway, there's lesson about Shenzhen wa
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Nice justification for 24x7 spying on 700 million people. Couldn't they have just rented 10 cars and driven around all the cities to find the ghost cities in a month or so?
Oh noes, can't have anything threating land prices (Score:5, Insightful)
> although only 20 of these were revealed in the report to avoid potential harm to the real estate market in these areas.
Wow. This is a new low for capitalism. Can't reveal facts because someone might lose money if they ever came to light ! /sarcasm And here I thought only the USA had the best government money can buy.
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You're totally right. Being on one of the most prominent news sites in the world is exactly like hiding it completely and not telling any one.
Someone should ban you.
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Wow.
I guess you can fix ignorant but you can't fix stupid.
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The Faux news
Kind of like how your post is being used to push your own political agenda.
Ironic that you're trying to be all high and mighty about Fox's shitty practice while at the same time doing the exact thing you're whining about.
Next you demonstrate you clearly have no fucking clue how districting works and why its like it is.
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You misspelled communism.
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More like state capitalism, aka fascism.
Re:Oh noes, can't have anything threating land pri (Score:4, Informative)
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And here I thought only the USA had the best government money can buy.
Billionaire Lawmakers Ensure the Rich Are Represented in China’s Legislature [nytimes.com]
It seems that Chinese is trying to copy USA, but "building" bigger model. They are now going to build their military structure from USA model (of course, with more soldiers), they already copied the USA highway system, but with larger road, and more lanes.
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Some people who want to sell stuff are scum the world over and would prefer to hide any fact that reduces a sale price. Put some of those people in government, especially a very autocratic one like China, and the obvious happens.
There is hope though. A crackdown on corruption has been so effective that a side effect
Huh. (Score:4, Funny)
Lead researcher, Guanghua Chi hopes that the study will help the Chinese government...
And the Chinese government hopes Guanghua Chi's organs enjoy long, prosperous lives in their new [wealthy, Australian] bodies...
Protect The Monied Interests (Score:3)
We're in trouble now (Score:1)
They will probably use these cities to house ghost armies and take over the world. Bet they got the idea from "Return of the King".
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BUt only a Northern European can command that army..... doh!
Chinese long term thinking (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's been mentioned before that China is moving a lot of its rural population into cities to allow them to provide government services more efficiently, as well as create a larger consumer culture. At the same time, one of the only stable stores of wealth for Chinese is real estate. As many articles lately have mentioned, the stock market is even more speculative than ours and not suitable for long term investing. The only issue now is filling all these empty spaces so the original investors can get their money out.
We'll see what they have in mind for this next phase, but China has been remarkably good at long term central planning. It's something missing in Western countries -- the full control of authoritarianism while doing anything necessary to grow the economy. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
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But they also have been cutting costs alot and letting things go without good upkeep. How well thing go at full load?
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I think it's been mentioned before that China is moving a lot of its rural population into cities to allow them to provide government services more efficiently, as well as create a larger consumer culture. At the same time, one of the only stable stores of wealth for Chinese is real estate. As many articles lately have mentioned, the stock market is even more speculative than ours and not suitable for long term investing. The only issue now is filling all these empty spaces so the original investors can get their money out.
We'll see what they have in mind for this next phase, but China has been remarkably good at long term central planning. It's something missing in Western countries -- the full control of authoritarianism while doing anything necessary to grow the economy. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
Rather it's been very short term thinking, doing massive infrastructure projects of only marginal usefulness in order to maintain 10% economic growth and avoid a recession for reasons of political stability.
Do you really think they planned for massive empty cities? What do you think happens to big empty buildings? They don't hold their value.
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The wages of the people building, designing a city was seen as a good spend. Better to have them enjoying a days work, offer of advanced skills, new materials and local experts.
Over time it was felt that any created city would fill up as heavy production in the area would need workers and workers like clean, new homes with other worke
So no return in China's property market (Score:2)