Post by msapple on Mar 26, 2014 9:05:47 GMT -5
Most have seen the empty ‘ghost cities’ popping up in China. Billions have been spent constructing these cities yet they are completely vacant. As if that wasn’t strange enough, now the Chinese have built a ghost city in Nova Cidade de Kilamba, in Africa.
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Check out these eerie pictures:
Nobody really knows why they are doing this. Some have speculated it’s a means of preserving wealth but wouldn’t simple real-estate investments suffice?
Others have said they are being built so lower level Chinese government officials can avoid scrutiny from the higher-ups. If this were the case, how does that explain building in Africa?
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What’s really going on here?
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Now, state-owned China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) has built a town in Angola. And it's fairly empty.
Just outside Angola's capital city of Luanda is Nova Cidade de Kilamba a residential development of 750 eight-story apartment buildings, a dozen schools, and more than 100 retail units, reports the BBC's Louise Redvers.
The $3.5 billion development covers 12,355 acres and was built to house about 500,000 people, and this is one of "several satellite cities being constructed by Chinese firms around Angola," writes Redvers.
Just outside Angola's capital city of Luanda is Nova Cidade de Kilamba a residential development of 750 eight-story apartment buildings, a dozen schools, and more than 100 retail units, reports the BBC's Louise Redvers.
The $3.5 billion development covers 12,355 acres and was built to house about 500,000 people, and this is one of "several satellite cities being constructed by Chinese firms around Angola," writes Redvers.
Nobody really knows why they are doing this. Some have speculated it’s a means of preserving wealth but wouldn’t simple real-estate investments suffice?
Business Insider speculated that the Chinese need to put their money somewhere, so developers have decided to build, as a place to store the wealth, even if the Chinese building these cities do not intend to live in them and there is no prospect they can find renters.
ScallyWagAndVagabond.com quoted Patrick Chovanec, a business teacher at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who explained, “Who wants to be the mayor who reports that he didn’t get 8 percent GDP growth this year? Nobody wants to come forward with that. So the incentives in the system are to build. And if that’s the easiest way to achieve growth, then you build.”
What’s really going on here?
