Are NEW Chinese buildings really FALLING DOWN?
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it in threads on China's housing glut and construction quality as visual evidence of poor, empty new buildings.
What it is
The ADVChina hosts tour a villa neighborhood in southern China that was built only three years earlier and is already empty and deteriorating. They use it to discuss ghost cities, building quality and the real estate bubble.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2018 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends ballenf · 2018-08 · on “Always-on Alibaba office app fuels backlash among Chinese workers”
ADV China youtube channel has covered this with some great video of new construction problems in China (not implying the problem is only there): [this video]
Recommends ajflores1604 · 2019-07 · on “China’s State-Driven Growth Model Is Running Out of Gas”
This video from last year was pretty eye opening to me. Shows uninhabited "new" ghost cities completely crumbling. There's no underlying value to the property bubble going on over there and the scale seems mind blowing. [this video]
Cites FooHentai · 2019-01 · on “A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)”
"Immediately above us towered what could have been the headquarters of a bank — forty floors of office space, wrapped in a shell of mirrored panels. In its un-maintained state however, these reflective scales were falling away in great swathes, to expose the bare concrete beneath. Not even finished yet, and already it needed a makeover." [LINK] "the farmers that own the land here get the cheapest materials, and make these pop up out of nowhere": [LINK] Follow-up video "Are new chinese buildings really falling down?": [this video] tl;dr yes. Note at 2:30 "We saw this place being built three years ago".
Cites toomuchtodo · 2019-02 · on “China's housing glut casts pall over the economy”
These are concrete structures, 20 stories tall, that are collapsing in less than a decade. This isn't a case of lack of maintenance, but poor construction trying to goose GDP. [this video]
Cites gthtjtkt · 2019-04 · on “‘China’s Manhattan’ Borrowed Heavily, but the People Have Yet to Arrive”
Yeah, I watch a few YouTube channels of Americans in China and the ghost towns are still everywhere. Their buildings in general also seems to be of extremely poor quality, but it's one of those topics that's socially unacceptable to discuss. Here's a recent example: [this video]
Cites reaperducer · 2019-04 · on “Construction has kept rent in Chongqing, China to $75 a month”
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. The construction quality in mainland China is terrible. I've witnessed a lot of it, myself, but this video was posted on HN a couple of days ago: [this video] As bad as that is, it only scratches the surface because they didn't actually go inside any of the buildings. It would be unimaginable for a building outside of the Chinese bubble to literally start collapsing upon itself after standing on its own for only three years.
Cites pas · 2019-05 · on “Study Pinpoints Source of Banned Gas That Saps Ozone Layer: Eastern China”
State socialism/communism. Everything is provided, decided, controlled, influenced, reviewed, rethought by and via the state (in some representation, the party, the government, the local government, some group or other, an official, someone with connections, the police, or even just a faceless automated system/website/machine). This reminds people that everything is temporary, effort is futile, etc. This makes people simply not care much about common stuff. (Environment, roads, streets, houses, etc.) Source, I'm from a post-soviet country, and we're dealing with huge swaths of the population who are still very much thinking like this. See also: - [LINK] (why everything is falling apart) - [V
Cites justaman · 2020-12 · on “How the CCP Does Job Promotions”
Here is video of a Chinese ghost city. It was made by a bloggers that were forced to leave the country for fear of their lives. [this video] > At every level, there is total abdication of responsibility. The whole system incentivizes this. Exactly like the USSR and Chernobyl.