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Real reason for China's ghost cities?

 
Anonymous Coward (OP)
User ID: 15456734
Australia
09/12/2012 03:34 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
Thanks for the pin guys.
taniatarn

User ID: 21658555
New Zealand
09/12/2012 03:48 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
You can be assured China does nothing without planing. They have a hundred year plan, were America plans four years at a time, from one election to the next. The Chinese always plan a hundred years in advance, so these cities have a place in that plan. Anyone that has studied eastern civilization knows this to be true.
 Quoting: Desert Fox


+1
 Quoting: Doommincus Maximus


agree with this.
Interested observer of all things interesting!

Please note : Where appropriate for posted images/ graphs I acknowledge the New Zealand GeoNet project and its sponsors EQC, GNS Science and LINZ, for providing data/images used in my study and analyses of Volcanic and Earthquake information in New Zealand.
Anonymous Coward (OP)
User ID: 15456734
Australia
09/12/2012 04:10 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. [link to blogs.ft.com]


A scheme to create Honduran “model cities” – a term redolent of George Orwell – was created a year ago, but only this week an agreement was reached with a US-based investment group MGK to build the first of three.

The model cities are to be states within a state, with their own legal and law enforcement agencies, tax and monetary systems – “Hello US dollar”, “Adiós Honduran lempira”, presumably – and every conceivable facility to attract investment.

The concept sounds like a steroid-enhanced vision of a free-market enthusiast. Which it is. The US economist Paul Romer has dreamed up the idea of creating cities, along the lines of Hong Kong and Singapore, which have created poles of dynamic investment that have spilled over into their once impoverished hinterlands.

So far, so good. But Singapore and Hong Kong were cities in their own right before they become poles of development for neighboring regions. In Honduras, the aim is to build each city on a huge vacant lot. Everything is to begin from scratch.

So far, MGK has promised to invest $15 million in the first model city, and the government of South Korea has chipped in with $4 million. That would be plenty of money to invest in a chain of British fish-and-chip shops, but hardly enough to put in even the plumbing for the first model city in tropical Honduras.


[link to blogs.ft.com]

So the initial investor is MGK. And a South Korean influence too?
Anonymous Coward (OP)
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Australia
09/12/2012 04:13 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
Honduras is set to play SimCity for real, albeit without the economist who devised the rules of the game. Last Tuesday, the government signed an agreement with private investors led by Michael Strong--a libertarian entrepreneur and close associate of Whole Foods co-founder and CEO John Mackey--to construct a city-from-scratch in one of at least three special development regions (“las Regiones Especiales de Desarrollo” or “REDs”) scattered around the country.

REDs possess the legal right to establish--or outsource to foreign governments and companies as necessary--their own hospitals, schools, judges, and even police, all independent of Honduran law. The first is for profit, and if its founders have their way, it will look and feel a little like the Mosquito Coast’s answer to Austin.

[link to www.fastcoexist.com]

"Prior to starting MKG, Strong co-founded a movement named FLOW (“Freedom Lights Our World”) and wrote an entrepreneurial manifesto with Whole Foods’ John Mackey. More recently, he joined the board of the Seasteading Institute (whose founder, Patri Friedman, has started his own for-profit company with the stated aim of building cities in Honduras) and co-founded the Free Cities Institute, a think tank based at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala. (UFM, which I visited last spring, has a library named after Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises and a bas-relief of Atlas shrugging at the entrance to its business school.)"
Anonymous Coward (OP)
User ID: 15456734
Australia
09/12/2012 04:16 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
"One fascinating thing about these private cities is that the hypothesis is that the most important “infrastructure” behind a building a free and prosperous society is the rule of law. So that the emphasis of the founders is on building a court system and a set of voluntary laws that investors and workers can opt-in to by contract. I suspect that the ventures will prove highly successful and may become a prototype for similar investments in the future in other impoverished areas where the rule of law is weak."

[link to www.volokh.com]
odinson222

User ID: 19727744
United States
09/12/2012 04:16 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
bump
odinson222

A Man Has Got to Know His Limitations

I am just a sinner trying to make it to heaven!

Romans 8:35-39
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Anonymous Coward (OP)
User ID: 15456734
Australia
09/12/2012 04:19 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
"I have no idea if this is feasible. The sum of my knowledge of such ventures derives from RoboCop. And, Bioshock. Apparently the artistic community isn't a fan of the concept.

But it will be a fascinating experiment.

I'm curious about the legal charters here -- do judges have the power to compel the managing corporation to do this and that -- like, "spend $45 billion more right now! I mean it, guys!" -- or is it built into the charter that they don't? I assume the latter, otherwise who the heck would risk the whim of a judge who decides to start running your company for you?

Very neat idea.

Seems Marx had it backwards. Socialism isn't the answer to the internal contradictions in capitalism; capitalism is the solution for the contradictions -- and massive humanity-crushing failures -- of socialism.

As they say of democracy: People try it once all other possibilities have been proven to have failed.

But What I Don't Get... Is how sovereign authority can be passed to private hands in a democracy.

And if it's not passed, then the private corporation really doesn't run the city.

I don't know how they worked out this problematic contradiction at the center of the scheme.
 Quoting: ACE - from Ace of Spades HQ


[link to minx.cc]
Dirt Diver

User ID: 23574648
Belgium
09/12/2012 04:21 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
Bet they have Agenda 21 over there too,
every humman outside the city perimeter will be a 'terrorist' and will be fought with drones etc.
embrace your future and burnit
Anonymous Coward (OP)
User ID: 15456734
Australia
09/12/2012 04:30 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
All jokes a side, the sci-fi films are but a small sideways step away from this development.
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 593499
Canada
09/12/2012 04:36 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
any ghost town in the US would probably turn into another Las Vegas...Im sure the area in Las Vegas was suppose to be some kind of fallout for something...but someone said fuck it and lets build some casinos with lots of hookers...
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 19193858
United States
09/12/2012 04:38 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
It's just a poor economic decision by the Chinese government. Rapidly creating these cities is an easy way to create demand and jobs, but no one can afford to buy or reside in these cities, so it is only a short term solution that will incur a lot of long term problems.
Anonymous Coward (OP)
User ID: 15456734
Australia
09/12/2012 04:41 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
US isnt imune to the phenominon either -

"ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- New Mexico, home to several of the nation's premier scientific, nuclear and military institutions, is planning to embark on a science project of unprecedented scale - a petri dish the size of a large U.S. city.

A Washington-based technology company announced plans Tuesday to build a 20-square-mile model metropolis that would be used to test everything from renewable energy innovations to intelligent traffic systems and next-generation wireless networks.

The replica city would be capable of supporting a population of 350,000, but would be the state's newest ghost town.

Pegasus Global CEO Bob Brumely says the $200 million project will be a first of its kind in the U.S. and could create a Silicon Valley of sorts in New Mexico."

- for market research.....
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 4281714
United States
09/12/2012 04:43 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
I always assumed they were part of a larger social experiment that tested the effects of:
1.) Close quarters living
2.) Close off social systems
3.) Social/Authoritative pressure
4.) Chemical and Psychological warfare
5.) False abandonment survivalism

But what do I know. *cough*
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 593499
Canada
09/12/2012 04:45 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
This reminds me of the game Sim City...Just building cities for fun and watching it get populated...whats sad is they should be modeling cities for a resource economy and human need...not a capitalistic one...*cries
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 17689295
United States
09/12/2012 04:49 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
I think they just keep building to keep their construction business alive. Happened in Az with many cities that are sitting vacant because there are no buyers. They built one huge housing complex that they later tore down because the cost of upkeep was too high.
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 4281714
United States
09/12/2012 04:55 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
Unit 731
Google it
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 21662845
Australia
09/12/2012 05:04 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
China had internet servers in remote jungles 15 years ago where no one even lived.
Now people live there and use it, they plan well ahead.
But these cities were because they were preparing for massive growth, but it wasn't quite that massive.
You see being a retched communist Marxist dictatorship, they have to provide jobs for their slaves.
Or they have to kill more of them.
And building these cities provided jobs for their slaves.
Thor's Hamster

User ID: 1248699
United States
09/12/2012 05:06 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
How can you tell a Chinese ghost? The eyeholes are almond-shaped, and the sheet's yellow.

(BOO!!! HISS!!!)
Apollo astronauts couldn't have passed through Van Allen's Belt. Van Allen wore suspenders.
Anonymous Coward (OP)
User ID: 15456734
Australia
09/12/2012 05:08 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
I always assumed they were part of a larger social experiment that tested the effects of:
1.) Close quarters living
2.) Close off social systems
3.) Social/Authoritative pressure
4.) Chemical and Psychological warfare
5.) False abandonment survivalism

But what do I know. *cough*
 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 4281714


Unit 731
Google it
 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 4281714


Oooh! an insider? What have you got to do with the project?

I'll have a gander at your links too. Tx.


EDIT - Eeek! is the link supposed to be about bio-warfare?

Elaborate if you can.
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 23638421
United Kingdom
09/12/2012 05:08 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
I wouldn't expect any less from the world's oldest empire.
 Quoting: Mister Obvious


sissy boy
Anonymous Coward (OP)
User ID: 15456734
Australia
09/12/2012 05:10 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
How can you tell a Chinese ghost? The eyeholes are almond-shaped, and the sheet's yellow.

(BOO!!! HISS!!!)
 Quoting: Thor's Hamster


You sayin we have a Chinese spook among us Hamy?
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 23638826
United Kingdom
09/12/2012 05:10 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
Unit 731
Google it
 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 4281714


obvious misdirection is obvious
Anonymous Coward (OP)
User ID: 15456734
Australia
09/12/2012 05:12 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
Possibly, but who knows, maybe has info pertaining to the white sands construction or the Honduras sites?
Muzzle

User ID: 8107898
United States
09/12/2012 05:18 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
Without a standing army, the local drug lords or politicians will own anything nice.
In his book, "Between Two Ages," Brzezinski wrote: "The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values."

MuzzleBreak
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 9128390
Australia
09/12/2012 05:25 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
Check out Angola ghost cities..
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 23594863
United States
09/12/2012 05:28 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
:9teen: They can plot and plan until the cows some home, but it ain't going to get them nowhere.

Psa 9:17 The wicked shall be turned into hell, [and] all the nations that forget God.
 Quoting: Judethz


I agree, they are in their own little sick world pretending to be Gods chosen few, when they are and hopefully will all be the first to go someplace where they will fry never to return.
Sperminator X
User ID: 4912635
Netherlands
09/12/2012 05:36 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
The Chinese knocked one of these cities up in Africa, too...

[liveleak] [link to www.dailymail.co.uk]
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 23638027
United States
09/12/2012 05:39 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
Maybe it's to relocate all the adjunda 21 transplants. I believe it's word wide.

They still have a few nomads over there and there's a good posibility that the survivors in america will be transported as part of a debt pay off.
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 527834
United Kingdom
09/12/2012 05:45 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
It's just what happens when a country has no modern culture, with a command and control economy run by the corrupt.

The western world corporations sold the country's sole to the devil to make a quick buck. The dumb sheeple were too busy shopping to notice they had bee sold out by corrupt politicians.

The world has got to have a "re-set". With 7 billion people it isn't going to be pretty. Prepare, and enjoy the ride!
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 23638826
United Kingdom
09/12/2012 05:52 AM
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Re: Real reason for China's ghost cities?
It's just what happens when a country has no modern culture, with a command and control economy run by the corrupt.

The western world corporations sold the country's sole to the devil to make a quick buck. The dumb sheeple were too busy shopping to notice they had bee sold out by corrupt politicians.

The world has got to have a "re-set". With 7 billion people it isn't going to be pretty. Prepare, and enjoy the ride!
 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 527834


your describing the uk there





GLP