Another Ghost Town built by China in Angola | Hacker News Reader

Another Ghost Town built by China in Angola

bbc.co.uk

38 pointsnarad35 comments

This link has some interesting satellite photos, and some discussion in Portuguese.

http://negociosangola.blogspot.com/2011/04/nova-cidade-do-ki...

I wonder why they picked such an isolated spot 30 km from the capital. Angola has one of the lowest population densities in the world, surely land is not so scarce there that you need to go such a distance.

EDIT: well, I'm reminded yet again of how you can't rely on journalists. I took the 30 km figure from the BBC article here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18646243

However, a check of Google maps shows that this town is a mile or so away from the capital, right outside the ring road. Even from the center of Luanda, it's not 18 miles as the crow flies. Certainly not "18 miles outside the capital". Doesn't seem like an unreasonable location, now that I've seen it.

EDIT 2: the affordability of this by average Angolans (or any large number of Angolans) is a different story, but my guess is that given the population growth of Angola and the location next to the capital, this town will fill up one way or another, tho' possibly at a loss to the government, which is repaying the Chinese loan for this with oil revenues. Also, it seems that the vast majority of workers who built this were Chinese - apparently Angola didn't insist on local employment offsets.

18 miles = 28.968192 kilometers

Wow, that seems like a pretty random response to the BBC saying a town right next to the capital is "perched on an isolated spot 18 miles away from the capital".

And by the way, what you said is not true. Please investigate the concept of significant digits. Reading that something is "18 miles away" and taking that to mean an exact number of millimeters is ridiculous. Given that we don't know from which exact point we are measuring, "18 miles", "19 miles", and "about 20 miles" would all be OK here, as is "30 km". If any of these were true, that is.

As a Chinese american, this shows the house of cards that is Chinese state capitalism. China builds these types of communities as a "bribe" to exploit natural resources in the respective country.

There are plenty examples of ghost towns in China https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+ghost+towns&hl=e...

I've visited some of these places on my trips back to China. The local governments in China are typically the ones who approve and push through these nonsensical plans.

The town itself doesn't seem like much of a bribe, since the funding was provided as a loan to Angola, and is being repaid from oil revenues. Also, the vast majority of the workers were Chinese, although it's pretty usual in such cases to negotiate major employment for the locals.

Source: http://negociosangola.blogspot.com/2011/04/nova-cidade-do-ki...

Now, whether a bribe ended up in someone's pocket to enable all this - I have no idea.

Does anyone know why they have these small balconies below the windows? Never seen this before.

I'm guessing it's just superficial decoration, as there is no door to make it useful as balcony.

My theory is that they are there to prevent people from either A) plummeting to their death upon climbing out the window or B) being able to throw trash out their windows into the street

There's no way they are useable as a balcony as you'd have to climb out a tiny window and drop 4 feet onto a sharp spiked railing.

Maybe to support air conditioner or just for plants (decoration, just to see some green through the window).

You can put plant vases on those and not have the risk of your vases falling on someone's head. Somewhat like this: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/look-flower-pots-as-window-b... (random image found with google image search).

Yep, although that's a picture of an actual balcony (a small one, but still), with a proper door instead of just a window above it.

This can't be a ghost town, I saw 2 pedestrians, more than on my weeklong visit to Silicon Valley.</yada>

I prefer to read over videos. Here's the article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18646243

China is building major buildings in many other countries -- They're sometimes offered as "gifts". Makes you wonder what they expect in return..

I suppose they expect good business relations in the future, like access to natural resources. What else could possibly come to mind? Sounds like a win-win situation to me. One side needs infrastructure badly and the other natural resources.

From the article: Kilamba was financed by a Chinese credit line - which Angola is repaying with oil - so it has technically been paid for. But if the houses go unsold, then the Angolan government will be left with stock on their hands and a potentially wasted investment.

So it's not a 'gift' per se. It's more like a bribe, to fulfill the president's promise of 1M new apartments. By pricing these at $120K each, China can extract a _lot_ of minerals from Angola.

Wonder what Paul Krugman think about this.

Edit. It's an honest question, these towns might turn out to be a good thing, I don't know.

Best Krugman comment on China I've ever seen, although it's inspired from reading someone else's analysis.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/financial-repres...

The original analysis was posted and commented here on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4091199

Yes, but I find Krugman's insight on that much more interesting. Hempton did an excellent job to summarize the issues. But Krugman is the one who identified what I believe to be the more important issue after thinking about it: the time bomb of when the savers become dissavers, and the corresponding consequences.

The ghost towns remain empty for the first year or two. But within five years all chinese ghost towns fill up. That's what I heard. We continue to hear about ghost towns because as soon as old ghost towns are filling up, china continues to build new ghost towns for future expansion.

Please correct me if wrong.

Do you have a citation for that fact?

There are cases of overbuilt areas but I think these stories are the West's insecurities on display about China's success.

In the US (Nevada) and Canada, there are areas where the developers have overbuilt, perhaps not on the scale of these Chinese development projects.

I thought it means that the Chinese are in for potentially even bigger trouble than the west.

It's unlikely, as mortgages (and debt in general) are very unpopular in China. It's currently not possible to even get a mortgage. Chinese ghost towns are, for the vast majority, bought and paid for by rich speculators in cash.

Not to say speculation isn't trouble, but theirs isn't built on debt (as was ours).

I think the problem isn't the population being in debt, because, as you mention, in China, most people pay cash as debt is anathema for most indivs. On the other hand, one or the main forces behind the construction is local government revenue. Local govt's raise funds through land leasing and selling. In order to remain solvent they enter into these real estate deals, if they are successful, they do well, if things go south, they are in debt --so there is the danger lots of local (CN) gov'ts being insolvent.

Here are details regarding how the ghost towns are funded and why China keeps building them so far from present city centers.

"It is hoped that these new towns will, in addition to alleviate urban congestion, spark further in-fill development in the expanse of farmland that sets the new town apart from the city center – a kind of pre-planned suburban sprawl. Funding for these new towns comes from the difference paid to compensate farmers to relocate (a calculation based on potential agricultural yields) and the substantially higher revenue generated from leasing the same land to developers." http://blogs.worldbank.org/transport/rise-of-the-chinese-gho...

In the comments the author also mentions that many of these buildings are offered at below cost to government employees.

I agree with you - debt is a big big no no - and having been here for some time now, I think China functions in an very very different way than the west, which is also why we see these conflicting reports telling us China is going down or up and so on. I am having a hard time understanding it often myself, but I try and sometimes, when I need to get stuff done (and I mean, just get stuff done!), it really helps to think like a Chinese..

Let me give you a simple maybe non-related example.. I tried to get a visa for China and it wasn't possible at all through official channels.. No matter what I did (embassy, visa offices and whatnot), they simply wouldn't grant me a visa which would allow me to enter and leave China as I wanted (only single/double entry, which is no good).. In the end after some help from a Chinese friend, I managed to get a visa because he knew somebody who knew somebody at the local police station, who could print a visa for me..

This is how you get stuff done in China - you know somebody - I now owe my friend a favor and as I understand it is unforgivable, if I do not pay him back some day in some way. China is driven by guanxi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi) ..

I am totally speculating here - just a laowai trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Someone Chinese please enlighten me!..

The fact that your friend can ask you for a favor in return is Guanxi, and is certainly a characteristic of Chinese culture that provides accountability and also is factor in whom one befriends.

The fact that a favor was required to get a visa that presumably you qualified for (or if it was used to get one that you didn't qualify for as well) is borderline corruption, even if no currency or goods were exchanged, since Guanxi dictates that at very least a favor is now owed. I have friends from China that talk about situations like this that include obtaining marriage licenses and dealing with fees associated with second and third children.

I see loads and loads of empty ghost towns, when I drive to the factory every two weeks in China..

They're not filling up right now. Even the city where the factory is located seems very deserted (big almost empty roads) except inside the factory compound, where all the factory workers live and work..

all chinese ghost towns fill up. That's what I heard.

Source? That's not what I've heard about China in particular. Rather, what I have read in a variety of sources is that economic statistics in China may not be reliable,

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/business/global/chinese-da...

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-29/chinas-lates...

so that the housing market in China

http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/02/markets/chanos-china-bear/in...

http://www.ft.com/intl/indepth/global-property-market

http://bx.businessweek.com/china-real-estate/

http://www.sfgate.com/business/bloomberg/article/Wen-Eases-O...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870476440457528...

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-26/china-gamble...

http://www.kanzhongguo.com/news/12/06/17/455914.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/06/03/chinas-hous...

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/13/business/la-fi-china...

faces huge uncertainty, with many Chinese workers unable to afford housing at current prices, but many developers sure to lose money if prices drop.

Everywhere else in the world, when empty developments were built ahead of demand, as happened in Ireland, Spain, and some parts of the United States, that was a reliable sign that the housing market was in a bubble that later burst. I have not heard any persuasive argument that China differs from other countries in this regard.

According to TIME, the largest Chinese ghost town, Ordos, is still unoccupied 5 years later: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1975397,00.htm...

One thing I hate about those kind of urbanscape is their utter blandness, even if people were to fill it up.

The footage from the video reminds me of the empty city in the movie Inception. It's pretty eerie seeing so much housing with no life.

Why does the article title say "Footage shows African 'ghost town'"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com