If the US decided to spend trillions of dollars a year building skyscrapers in Alaska it could be 'growing' at 7% a year too.
http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/china-ghost-cities-satellit...
http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/china-ghost-cities-satellit...
That sky scraper in question was built for a small seaside village limited by land because they were stuck between a mountain and water. It was really a one off and I don’t think it contributed much to USA debt.
>Ordos: The biggest ghost town in China (bbc 2012)
> In Inner Mongolia a new city stands largely empty. This city, Ordos, suggests that the great Chinese building boom, which did so much to fuel the country's astonishing economic growth, is over. Is a bubble about to burst?
While now:
>However, in 2017, the ghost city label is getting more than a little difficult to hang on Ordos Kangbashi. According to a recent report, there are now 153,000 people living there, 4,750 businesses are now in operation, and housing prices have risen roughly 50% on average from the end of 2015, when the local real estate market bottomed out. Of the 40,000 apartments that had been built in the new district since 2004, only 500 are still on the market.
The ghost city thing is exaggerated.
In the US, everyone associated with the investment would have lost their shirts years ago. In Communist China, debt pays you!
The really interesting thing is that the units are mostly owned. Why? Because you can't move very much money out of China due to the capital controls, tremendous flows of money go into property -- lots of people buy real estate never intending to live in it, or sometimes even to rent it... there are actually property sales ads that suggest no one should live there as the property is not designed for human habitation. :)