• senoro@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    20% of urban households in China own multiple homes, compared to 13% in the US and 10% in the UK. China suffers from having too much property in some areas where lots of it sit empty and not enough in others where people lack basic housing.

    • FrogFractions [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The “ghost cities” myth comes from the fact that China plans with a 15-20 year horizon and people in the west have forgotten what forward planning and a healthy economy looks like.

      These ghost cities are mostly thriving now and even back in 2015 the myth was being called out as bullshit and myopic, more a symptom of the failure to plan in the west.

      I mean, just look at the housing crisis almost all the west is experiencing right now before you chuckle in a self comforting way about ghost cities.

      It’s called “planning” mother fucker and the west should have done it too.

      • Even in grade school when the ghost cities story was making the rounds I remember thinking “this is fucking stupid, this is just a better way of building a city so you don’t have to tear shit back up when people are already living there”

        • senoro@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Erecting an entire city in the middle of nowhere is not a good way to make a city. Cities are like living things in that they have to grow and develop overtime. People won’t choose to move to a city with no one else there on the promise that there will be other people there in the future, you’d have to pay people to live there, either directly or through subsidised living costs. It’s much better to let a city grow naturally over time. It doesn’t need to be much time, a couple decades would probably work, but you have to let it expand naturally.

          • ped_xing [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            you have to let it expand naturally

            You really don’t, as evidenced by what China has successfully done many times over. Making up rules that keep you from solving problems just signals that no problems will get solved under the ideology you espouse.

          • zephyreks [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            That’s ideal but not necessary, particularly when you’re designing around a massive rural-to-urban migration. It’s the principle behind Soviet city design as well: you know that you’re going to get a massive migration, so you’re not tied down by silly things like “organic growth” because that will never keep up.

          • zkrzsz [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            The country with 1.4 Billions people does not need to wait for city to grow naturally. And as evidence, their ghost cities got filled up, you can can just search on Youtube for ghost city from article years ago and check.

      • senoro@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I took this almost word for word from a paper (albeit the introduction). I wasn’t just posting something I heard 20 years ago.

        Clearly, there is a conundrum where there is overbuilding and “ghost towns” on the one hand, and where millions of migrants and urban poor lack basic housing on the other hand.

        If you took my comment to be anything more than just a kind of statement question hybrid then that’s my bad, but I don’t feel there is need for anything more than a correction.

    • sicklemode [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      1 year ago

      You clearly have not been keeping up with China’s development.

      Planning ahead and building cities for the purposes of already having infrastructure for an expanding population (1.4 billion already), and also making those new cities attractive enough to cause sufficient migration that older cities (like Beijing) can be re-developed without having to uproot massive amounts of people makes perfect sense.

      China is unrecognizable now from 10 years ago, let alone 70 years ago. The speed of development is incredibly fast over there because the nation operates in the interests of the working class. Quality of life is reliably, consistently, and tangibly always improving in China. This compulsive, nonsensical urge to somehow, someway paint China as inferior to white Western countries is incredibly infantile with racist undertones, since the idea here is that only white countries (or their dogs like South Korea and Japan, two of the most miserable countries in East Asia) can ever get anything right despite having nothing to show for it.

      Here, go have a look for yourself at what a successful nation actually looks like: Living in China YouTube Channel

      The only thing China has to learn from Western countries is exactly what not to do, and how to avoid becoming a failed state, which they’ve all already arrived at or are in the process of becoming.

      • senoro@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Thanks for your comment, I do appreciate it, and I will check out that youtube channel. But are you telling me that there are failed states in the west? And if so could you name one?

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          But are you telling me that there are failed states in the west? And if so could you name one?

          You’re viewing the situation as a case of “the west” and “everyone else”, as if the countries within the west do not have a hand in the fact that everywhere else is unstable, underdeveloped or failing in some way.

          You should adjust your perspective instead to “the exploiters” and “the exploited”. The imperial core of the empire and the exploited periphery from which the imperial core extracts wealth. When you reassess your perspective and understand that the failure outside of the imperial garden countries is a result of these countries massively extracting wealth and resources to import it into the imperial core then you will be unable to continue to see it as “good states” and “failed states” but instead as one set of exploiters being responsible for the instability and under-development of the latter. The states you view as good are responsible for the states you view as failing.

          If you liberate those “failed states” from the wealth extraction and mineral exploitation of the states you view as good their fragility will soon make itself clear. And all these other countries you view as bad will stabilise when they are actually using their vast mineral wealth and riches for their country instead of for the imperial core.

          You should read Imperialism in the 21st Century.

        • sicklemode [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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          1 year ago

          Thanks for your comment, I do appreciate it, and I will check out that youtube channel.

          Thank you for being willing to engage.

          But are you telling me that there are failed states in the west? And if so could you name one?

          I’m going to re-post what I said in response to another person on another thread.

          The US has ornamental “rights” and “freedoms” that serve no tangible benefit to the material and social conditions of the working class and are virtues in name only.

          The US has had liberal democracy for quite a while now, and guess what? It’s a massive failure. The US is a failed state. Widespread illiteracy, decaying social and material conditions, widespread immiseration and loss of dignity, skyrocketing inflation, plummeting purchasing power for the working class, odious student and medical debt, widespread corruption, endless forever wars against the working class of other countries, environmental breakdown with collapsing ecosystems due to deliberately perpetuated fossil fuel dependence, collapsing bridges and other crumbling infrastructure, subway systems that are de-facto sewers like in New York City, tent cities as far as the eye can see, home ownership nigh-impossible for the vast majority, over 50% of millennials and even higher percentage of young people having to live with their parents because rents are beyond absurd, increasingly more young people unable to afford their own transportation, people are even being priced out of trailer parks… But you can talk crap about your politicians and… yeah… you can do things that don’t actually challenge or tangibly displace the rule of the capitalist class…

          As for Europe, they’re undergoing de-industrialization right now because the US convinced them to sanction Russian energy, effectively cutting themselves off from the life force of industrial development. The US made doubly sure of this by blowing up the Nordstream pipelines so they couldn’t go back to it even if they wanted to.

          Now, Europe is buying Russian energy from India at rates higher than they were originally paying with status quo, making it considerably more expensive to operate in Europe. Thus, plants are closing down and moving to places like the US and China as the former cannibalizes its vassals in one last attempt to save its dying empire.

          As for Japan and South Korea, two of the most miserable countries in East Asia, the living conditions are abysmal. Apartments the size of broom closets cost a significant amount of one’s income. Upward mobility is very difficult, people are constantly worked to death, suicide rates are always outrageously high, even the birth rate seems to be constantly in decline (also among the lowest on Earth) because it’s just impossible to have room for anything besides work and drinking yourself to death.

          These are not signs of healthy, successful, well functioning states. A nation will only prosper when its young people thrive, and the complete opposite trend is and has been underway for a long time in the West. These nations are imploding, undergoing full-spectrum decay, while China is undergoing massive projects of national and global development and full-spectrum rejuvenation.

        • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Doctors without borders routinely does missions in America because it is so underdeveloped in places. We routinely watch infrastructe fail and kill lots of people. There is no money for Healthcare or education but the corrupt police that are proven to abuse their powers amd exploit people are given infinite budgets. Is there anyway you could say thr US hasn’t failed as a state?

      • chinese millenials may not be getting completely rooted by landlords over a barrel and sacrificing a third of their income to live in wretched squalor like the rest of the working class trapped in the Five Eyes surveillance police state, but have you considered that china is bad and the anglo-brain is more productive when being subjected to constant economic precarity?

        i mean, look how quickly the libs have rushed in here from their gig making apps for cats to dismiss cold facts. that’s the gumption and initiative that lets an investor buy their own pedo island!

        • bigboopballs [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          sacrificing a third of their income to live in wretched squalor like the rest of the working class trapped in the Five Eyes surveillance police state

          whoaaaa, only one third? I pay 50% and it’s only because I am roommates with a relative; I literally could not afford a 1 bedroom studio apartment with 100% of my income.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      China suffers from having too much property

      Lmao. Justify this statement. How is China suffering from it? Explain what you believe is causing people to suffer here.

      • iridaniotter [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        China would have suffered from having too much property. As in a decent chunk of their economic growth was tied to the overproduction of the construction sector. Now that bubble is being deflated so as not to end up like Japan.

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Which just highlights the bullshit. It has not suffered.

          And that justification isn’t really anything to do with having too many properties but instead more to do with distribution of the economy, which is itself absurd because of course it was always going to pivot into something else when it had enough.