China's Ghost Cities and Malls
It will be cheaper ...
It will be cheaper to demolish then then to rent them out for almost nothing.
Insane corruption ...
Insane corruption at work here. That's what you get in an authoritarian state.
maybe those are ...
maybe those are built for the residents of Tokyo to translocate due to the radiation......or maybe it's the movie set for "I am Legend 2".......who knows?
these "ghost ...
these "ghost cities" are being built for a massive urbanization project, ppl from the countryside are going to be moved en masses at some point in the future....
actually, leave it ...
actually, leave it to the secret police to sort out corruption in the state, sure now and then you have a few minor incidents like tainted good killing a handful of people but you don't have overt corruption that will lead to the collapse of the national economy. Alot of these officials are basically tied to their position knowing if they screw up them and their entire families will suffer.
well at least they ...
well at least they caught the corrupt official who let it happen. I'm not saying china is immune to corruption, but people in positions of power are much less prone to corruption when they have a gun pointed at their heads or at least the illusion of one.
I don't see ...
I don't see investors lining up to build vertical farms. Like the space solar power ideas in the 1970s, this is 'decades away'...which is a euphemism for economically unviable. Growing crops outside, in the dirt, preferably with rain for irrigation, is still the most cost-effective farming approach. Food prices are already rising, and the capital costs of these skyscraper garden concepts are breathtaking. Better to just live within our ecological means, by keeping the population stable.
Chinese don't do ...
Chinese don't do those things. They simply buy properties and keep them that way because they have plenty of money and don't care about it!
...Or 'Canadian' ...
...Or 'Canadian' realtors and developers, most of whom work for the Chinese. Have a look at the condo projects going up in Calgary (e.g., Hon Towers, University City): all being bought by Chinese investors, some of whom are laundering Triad money. Google "Sidewinder Report"+"CSIS"+"RCMP" and Richard Fadden, to see what kind of damage this is doing.
Really, it's just ...
Really, it's just the plain old free market that keeps generating these building booms and inevitable bubbles. As in China, developers kept on building, when there was no real market to absorb the supply. And financial products (derivatives, short-selling) that were completely divorced from reality were grafted onto real estate speculation. Globalised capitalism meant that the regulation of insurers and reinsurers of debt portfolios and securities trading was impossible.
Actually, the ...
Actually, the American healthcare system, as it stands today (Medicare, Medicaid, etc.), is far more 'socialistic' than China's. There is no real public healthcare system in China. When the old Communes, with their integral polyclinics and health care systems, were broken up, nothing replaced them. In contrast to the U.S., Canada, EU, even Mexico, there is pretty much nothing in the way of state social programs in China.
If the owners can't ...
If the owners can't recoup their investment (flipping, subletting/renting), then they will be wiped out.
Fannie Mae and ...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were, for all practical purposes, state-run enterprises, but THAT happened. Again, it's foolish to credit the CPC with either ethics, or a desire to act in the national interest.
You're crediting ...
You're crediting the Chinese Communist Party with ethics that they don't have. Many of the fat-cat developers and bankers in China ARE Commie Party elites. The lines between government officialdom, regulatory bodies, and private businesses--as well as organised crime--are blurry in China, at best. Again, a country which allows tainted milk to kill its own babies for profit (not to mention selling 'baby powder') has a serious ethical deficit.
Ofcourse the ...
Ofcourse the present system of water usage is extremely wasteful, but with the right infrastructure and urban planning you can minimise usage and waste. As for farming, to reduce losses to evaporation vertical farms can be built in cities close to water reclaimation plants to ease the water costs of large scale field farming. Granted this technology might take decades to mature. But it Is the future.
Chinese officials ...
Chinese officials looked the other way, when melamine-tainted milk ended up being fed to Chinese babies. They won't 'do the right thing.' When the economy tanks, the CPC brass and business owners will try to high-tail it to Canada, the U.S., or elsewhere. Actually, they're already doing this Google "missing bosses of China" to see what's going on.
Desalination takes ...
Desalination takes energy, and there is no fix to this, other than re-inventing the laws of physics. To reiterate: there is no cost-effective way to produce large amounts of fresh water for irrigation...let alone things like sanitation. Search Youtube for "sceptic trucks of Dubai" and see something really gross. This is because a sanitary sewer system simply requires large volumes of water--something they don't have. There are no pie in the sky technological fixes around the corner.
Other than the ...
Other than the cereal and legume-fed 'marbled' beef popular in the developed world and China, consumption of ruminants and their milk can actually increase the available food supply (i.e., because people can't digest cellulose). And, again, so many countries don't even produce enough food--they just buy it from somewhere else: e.g., Egypt, which has to import over 60% of its food supply. There's also the issue of overfishing, which is another ball of wax (fish farming can't replace it).
Also, consider the ...
Also, consider the vast amounts of resources wasted on energy intensive foods like meat and milk. If there was a real food shortage then countries would just ban the production of livestock and instead divert much needed grain and water to low demand food types.
well the technology ...
well the technology for water reclaimation, desalination and recycling are around, it's only not economical to use them on a large scale at this time. With innovations in the next few decades cheap and easy methods of water production will ease alot of these problems.
If those in power ...
If those in power knew that their lives literally depended on them doing the right thing for the country then I guarentee you corperate corruption would be cut down drastically
The american idea ...
The american idea of nationalisation is to buy out the bank with state money and have the same theives who ran it into the ground keep their jobs. The chinese version of nationalisation is, take over the bank by force, send the corrupt fatcats to a public firing squad for wrecking the economy and install a government official as the new CEO.
Conversly, the post ...
Conversly, the post-Soviet EUROPEAN (Slavic, Baltic) birthrates fell, with worsening living standards after the late 1960s, and the collapse of the Soviet economy. Meanwhile, Gulf State birthrates have remained high, with the oil boom. And, thanks to private and public social programs (e.g., daycare, mat leave), Western birthrates have had an uptick. Also, China's 'one child' policy is so riddled with loopholes and corruption that it's easy to circumvent. Again, it is CULTURE that's the issue.
Birthrates are ...
Birthrates are CULTURALLY dependent. Take Soviet Central Asia. There were huge improvements in living standards: universal education, vaccinations, sanitation, rising incomes compared to the Khans and Tsars. But the birthrate remained the same, and--given lower mortality--the population GREW. This is because the Muslim (Turkic, Tadjik) cultures favoured large families. The fall in Western birthrates was largely due to social changes which saw women enter the workforce in large numbers.
What the post-WW II ...
What the post-WW II 'green revolution' did is borrow time: heavy fertiliser use, pesticides, irrigation (in places like India and the Middle East, and much of the U.S., from non-renewable aquifers). And then there were disastrous megaprojects, like the Soviet irrigation of Central Asia. Now, Nature is calling in the debt. Like any ecosystem, human environs have finite populations they can support. Countries like China, Egypt, India, Japan, and much of Europe need imports to feed themselves.