The construction boom that accompanied China’s rapid economic rise sparked a wave of large-scale residential and commercial projects across the country.
This gave rise to vast, under-inhabited developments—including entire pre-built metropolises that never quite filled up—earning them the now-famous nickname: “ghost cities.”
A Modest Turnaround
A major factor was the Chinese tendency to purchase multiple homes as investments. An estimated 70 percent of household wealth in the country is tied up in real estate. When the property bubble burst and prices began to fall amid a broader economic slowdown, the market froze, leaving many of these units unoccupied.
Over the past decade, some of these areas have slowly attracted enough residents to cast doubt on the “ghost city” label. But the scale of the vacancy problem remains staggering: From 65 million to 80 million housing units across China are estimated to be empty.
One of the most notorious examples is the Kangbashi District in Ordos, Inner Mongolia. In 2010, the district had the capacity to house around 300,000 people—but less than 10 percent of those units were occupied.
Now, more than 120,000 people live there, and thousands of students are enrolled in local schools.
Even so, the city’s future growth remains limited. China’s population is declining, with falling birth rates failing to offset the aging population. Inner Mongolia’s population shrank by 0.3 percent in 2023—more than twice the national decline, according to official data.
Newsweek reached out to China’s Foreign Ministry via email with a request for comment.
Failed Ambitions
Other high-profile projects have fared far worse. The Yujiapu Financial District in Tianjin, once touted as China’s answer to Manhattan, stands as a stark warning.
Constructed in the early 2010s, with a full skyline of office towers, wide boulevards and even a subway extension, the area was largely finished.
But it never drew significant business or residential activity. Years after its debut, Yujiapu remains eerily vacant—a monument to how speculative construction and top-down planning can outpace actual demand.
While some developments like Yujiapu have stalled after completion, others have yet to fully begin.
One such case is Xiong’an New Area, a state-designated special economic zone in Hebei province. Under construction and closely tied to Beijing’s long-term vision, Xiong’an is intended as a political and technological hub. For now, though, its empty streets reflect delays and rollout issues, not abandonment.
Among the biggest deterrents in places like Kangbashi and elsewhere have been the lack of a local job base and insufficient infrastructure in areas like health care and education.
“There was the belief that while people might not move there for work, they might invest in the properties—like you invest in the stock market—and that might create the potential to make it a city with jobs, but that’s simply not enough to inhabit a place. You need jobs to thrive,” Sarah Williams, associate professor of technology and urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Newsweek.
Risks Remain
It’s the smaller, lesser-known ghost cities that pose the biggest threat to China’s already fragile housing market, according to Williams.
“They represent pockets of overinvestment that lie vacant and threaten the livelihoods of the people who purchased apartments within them because they likely will not get a return on their investment,” Williams said.
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