China’s ghost cities are good evidence that China has wasted trillions of dollars in investment spending. But are they really?
Apart from a few nice photographs of empty streets and shopping malls, it’s been hard to find actual data for this phenomenon. That is until the World Bank recently came out with a report about urbanization in Asia.
The findings: Yes, China has wasted trillions on unused urbanization projects, although 131 million people changed from being rural to urban from 2000 to 2010.
The overall population density in urban areas in China remained stable over the period, but it is very unevenly distributed across the different urban centers, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center, based on the World Bank report.
PEW Research Center
