Ordos, China was built by the Chinese government to have a population in excess of 1 million people. The city was constructed with funds made available by the Chinese government as economic stimulus funds. As you will see in the video the city was well planned and built to high modern standards.
The problem with Ordos is that almost no one actually lives there. Housing within the city is priced beyond the reach of most Chinese citizens. Without people the city stands as a monument to how ridiculous governments can be in an effort to promote economic growth. The construction of the nearly empty city was made as part of the effort to achieve a 8% plus economic growth for the Chinese economy. While the 8% plus GDP growth rate was achieved by the Chinese government billions of dollars were spent in the construction of a city that few people can afford to live in.
One has to wonder how many other cities or huge construction projects in China are completed only to boost the nation’s outstanding but perhaps questionable growth rate in GDP. While there is little doubt that China is poised for amazing growth during the 21st century there is likely to be some very rough spots within the growth trend. Spending billions of dollars to construct cities without people seems to be a most wasteful way to allocate stimulus funds.
Even with with its huge reservoir of foreign exchange reserves China may find that it is better to keep the funds in reserve rather than to spend them merely to achieve arbitrary GDP growth figures. Anyone investing in China should be aware that as with any other investment care should be taken in the allocation of hard earned investment funds as growth rates may not always be what they at first seem to be.
The city of Ordos will probably pay off for the Chinese government sometime in the future. But judging from the activity level as shown in the video that time may be far in the future. Building a city only to boost GNP figures would seem to be a rather foolish enterprise.
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