Baidu found China’s “ghost cities” but is keeping their locations mostly secret

I saw a documentary once about two ghost cities, the documentary was 6 years old and those cites were almost with 0 resident, I saw on comment Chinese people saying that those cities are full now. It's just China being two steps forward.

Hey, isn't there a refugee Crysis in Europe? How about filling up these ghost towns with actual people in dire need of shelter and other basic necessities?

I'll dispute one data point on that map: Xiaoshan, just across the Qiantang river from Hangzhou. I lived there from 2009-2010. When I moved there it had recently been renamed/rezoned into Xiaoshan District of Hangzhou city. So technically, Xiaoshan is not a city anymore. Also, despite an obvious wealth gap between new developments and "older" parts of southern Xiaoshan, the place was still _teeming_ with people as Chinese cities do. Xiaoshan had its own local and high-speed rail stations, too.

Let's paint a brief picture of this place for your procrastination pleasure ;) I’m excerpting a couple things from my journal, and this is the tip of the iceberg of what I experienced there.

What Xiaoshan is not: miles of high rises with no one there like other “ghost cities”. It is instead an old farming "city" with a new high-rises and pavement slowly taking over from the north. Central Xiaoshan is where the meld is happening. On the outskirts of Xiaoshan district, pockets of new developments and factories pepper farmlands like little islands. Joining them together was a network of new, large expressways with huge road-side billboards boasting the new “zhejiang high technology hub”. As one cabbie explained to me about 10 months into my stay, “15 years ago this entire place was rice fields”. He struggled to adapt to modern life so quickly, and knew he had to for his family. Another cabbie having a harder time adjusting actually called me a “white monster” and pleaded I don’t any marry locals or else I'll bring bad luck to their families.

The only time Xiaoshan felt "ghost" was on these outskirts of these “islands" where developments abruptly ended and turned into farmland that was scheduled to be converted soon. Roads suddenly disappeared. Storefronts and commercial buildings vanished. High rises gave way to farms and shanty towns that housed pockets of people living in extraordinarily poor conditions compared to what was half a mile away. People without reliable tap water and electricity, while I lived in a new high rise less than 2 miles away.

My old bosses thought it would be cheeky to house me in a new apartment building named after a famous US State. This building was actually a de-facto high-end local brothel on the edge of the central Xiaoshan “island”. Late night this place was a Chinese version of Animal House. I'll leave the details out here, but this building was lawless. Literally - the police handled _nothing_ that happened there and were probably paid to stay away.

The apartment building was also attached to a mega-mall that was mostly empty all the time. There was a spanking new digital projection movie theater with 500 seats, a huge KTV, a few struggling restaurants, every luxury brand store you can think of, and typical department store wares. Movie nights were interesting. The theater attendance was so low, I’d often be the only person in a theater with a 70 foot screen all to myself. Sometimes the staff would hang with me to watch movies b/c they had jack else to do. Foreign movies were censored in weird ways: I distinctly remember how the audio in Iron Man 2 would always mute the word "Russia". Every time Ivan Vanko's spoke in Russian, the Chinese subtitles would say he’s speaking Afghani - no mentioning of Russia/Russian allowed, apparently! I couldn’t read fast enough to know if the dialogue was translated correctly, though.

Among the “islands" between Xiaoshan and the river also lay fabric and electronics factories, and compounds for communities of the very wealthy. One of the best private schools in all of Zhejiang sat in the middle of a high rise neighbourhood of shiny, expensive new buildings. 15 minutes away, Cisco had a two tower office complex seemingly in the middle of nowhere full of people who lived nearby. Hop on the freeway, drive past Alibaba HQ (which employs thousands), take the bridge across the river, and you're dropped into downtown Hangzhou, which is still being altered to accomodate larger traffic flow. Xiaoshan was hardly ghost, but had pockets of activity. Sparse is probably what you would call Xiaoshan. Ride the bus from central Xiaoshan through these “islands” of factory workers and technology, and you see a very dramatic picture of China moving at full tilt.

Xiaoshan was developed very quickly and continues to do what "new" developments in China do: grow fast and grow big. Many of the "new rich" residents quickly moved to this district as it rose to escape crowded downdown. The local government is very focused on turning Hangzhou into a large metropolis similar in scope to Shanghai. They have a ton of land to work with still. If I ever go back one day, I’ll probably have trouble recognising the place. So no, Xiaoshan is hardly a ghost city.

Btw, the G20 next year will be in Hangzhou. Wouldn't be surprised if Xiaoshan shows up again soon!

Edit: cleaned up my writing a bit.

Is it possible for a foreigner to travel to these cities and take pictures?

I would treat anything from Baidu with a grain of salt, mainly Baidu is not the most technical competent company, even among Chinese companies. There are other researches on ghost cities using methods like at night counting the number of units with lights on and do this for consequtive n nights, or measure the total power consumption over a period of time.

I would like to just say that Quarz is SUCH A GREAT new journalism portal. It seems to strike a solid balance of covering major global developments by touching on a linchpin issue and describing that aspect thoroughly and in an easy to understand manner.