Just Burn the Money: China's Failed Megaprojects

previously on this channel we talked about China's South China Sea military bases that were constructed at top man-made Islands their construction was impressive even if it wasn't the most practical solution to the perceived problem however back when that episode was written there was one Minor Detail that wasn't being reported yet the islands are sinking the area in which they were built is not particularly suitable for artificial Islands so the concrete has begun to crumble and the bases are beginning to sink into the sea this is the fate of all too many of China's Mega projects they seem flashy they seem impressive and they're constructed quickly and they're immediately used for their intended function and then once news breaks of China's success everybody tends to stop paying attention as those Mega projects start to fall apart or fail to live up to the initial height today we're going to be looking at some of China's failed and collapsing Mega projects as well as one that never got far enough off the [Music] ground it's an idea we've seen before in cartoons a person is stuck in traffic so they press a button on their dashboard that elevates the body of their car allowing them to Simply drive over the gridlock while this cartoon version of The Invention is logistically ridiculous some designers thought that there was still something to this idea instead of a personal vehicle what if there was a form of public transportation that could drive on a road above other car that was the idea behind China's Transit elevated bus or teb also sometimes referred to as a straddling bus today's video is brought to you by cook Unity cook Unity isn't just another meal service it's a chef Collective celebrating diversity and creativity in your food in your own home picture this award-winning chefs from around the US crafting signature meals made just for you first you set your preferences you tell them what you like and they'll tailor a meal plan that fits your lifestyle second 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miss out on the deal go to cook unity.com SSID pro50 use the code Sid pro50 and get ready for some mouthwatering food and now back to to today's video while ideas like this have been floated around since as early as the 1960s nobody ever tried it that all changed in 2010 when China unveiled designs for the TB which Time magazine named one of the 50 best inventions of the year the idea itself is pretty simple tracks would be built on either side of the road for the TB to drive along straddling the regular traffic and allowing the bus to continue moving even when everybody else was at a standstill the body of the bus would be elevated above the road allowing it to transport its 300 passengers to their destination some very a of the design even allowed for up to 1,200 passengers per bus it seemed to be a really appealing idea for investors a public transit system that wasn't impeded by traffic it theoretically always run on time and this would encourage people to use the bus rather than relying on their own cars to commute on the surface it seemed like a brilliant idea and the scale models that were designed to shirt operating on congested streets looked really impressive but then something called reality started to set in there were countless problems with the TB not least of which was that it was simultan ously Too Tall and also not tall enough a 4.8 M High the bus would exceed China's height limit for a vehicle this meant there was a danger of it crashing into overhead traffic lights or signs however the area beneath the bus's body only had a clearance of 2.1 M while that's plenty of room for a compact car many trucks vans and SUVs are taller than that and that's before even factoring in freight trucks which you know also like to use the roads even if the TB was able to successfully clear all of the traffic it still POS problems for drivers they would be unable to shift Lanes or turn off the current road while being straddled by the bus and they would be unable to see any signs or traffic lights but I mean those are other people's problems right everybody on the bus would be just fine well as long as the bus was traveling along a straight route then sure but the TB couldn't really turn at least not very well it required long areas of straight roads to travel on and it could only turn at a very shallow angle the major cities that wanted to utilize this form of public transportation simply didn't have Road that would accommodate it they also would have needed to build large elevated platforms be able to load onto and off of the bus and these would have taken up a lot of space that well might not have existed there's also the small matter that China's roads may not be able to withstand the massive weight of the TB now despite all of these concerns plans went ahead and the first test model was unveiled in chinwan do where the 22 M long bus traveled along a 300 M track however that same month the government officials said that they knew nothing about the test that was being performed the Revelation that this was some sort of publicity stunt rather than a government authorized test of the new technology shook investor confidence people began calling the TV a scam and a pzi scheme and by the Year's End 200 investors had pulled out of the project and with that China's new public transportation Mega project that was going to revolutionize Urban Transit came to an end if you've never heard the term dupure before you're not alone the portamento of duplicate and architecture is almost exclusively found in China and it's exactly what it sounds like China has built multiple massive cities that were meant to be exact duplicates of existing cities or at least parts of those cities they may have only replicated a few square miles of each major Metropolis but they were still filled with recognizable landmarks and enough skyscrapers to house a massive quantity of people why pay to travel all the way from China to Manhattan when you can visit the nearby yapu instead instead of London just travel to tempst toown and instead of Paris there tandu Chang also known as the sky City these Recreations are so faithful that Tang duang even includes replicas of both the Eiffel Tower and the arct of Triumph and temps toown contains statues of both Winston Churchill and Harry Potter when these cities were first built they were certainly impressive after all they were just copying impressive cities that already existed however there is one thing that duplicate cities fail to copy from their originals and that is the population one of the reasons for the creation of these cities is the way the Chinese government handles Land Development if a developer wants to acquire land from a local government they are required to build something on it immediately this means that developers can't wait until the surrounding area develops to the point that it could sustain a major city like Manhattan before building the skyscrapers had to be thrown together as soon as the land was purchased and then all they could do was wait and hope that people moved in while in some cases those ghost cities did recover to some extent the majority of them haven't house and apartment prices are far too high for the average Chinese resident to afford and the land owners have no interest in lowering the prices regardless of how abandoned the cities are because the apartment buildings are generally owned by wealthy individuals who can afford to sit on the property for years without getting a return on their investment they've collectively agreed to just wait it out rather than lower prices to attract residents of course even if somebody could afford to live in Jau or tempst toown there wouldn't be much to do since the houses and apartments are all empty so too are most of the stores these cities were built with the expectation that hundreds of thousands are even a million people would reside in each but in most cases the population has never exceeded 10% of the initial estimate doe in no small parts of China's glass of go cities like these the nation has about 65 million empty houses and apartments that's enough empty residences to house the entire population of France but hey at least the cities looked really cool when they were first built not all of China's Mega projects have been built within their own bord China's belt and Road initiative known domestically as the one belt one road is a series of Mega projects built around the world particularly in developing nations China lends large sums of money to Nations to fund Mega projects which were often built by the Chinese the projects have drawn sharp criticism as being a form of neocolonialism and a form of debt trap diplomacy those such claims do remain a matter of debate but regardless of whether or not China has such nefarious intentions in lending money these projects are often deemed failes usually it's because just like China's ghost cities those Mega projects serve no actual purpose and stand alone as monuments to nothing however sometimes the failure is much more tangible than squandering time and money one of the most well-known examples is the Coca Coto singair Dam built along the Koka River in Ecuador the dam was built by China's state-owned Cena Hydro Corporation for a price EG of $2.25 billion and it was part of a larger $19 billion loan for various Construction projects across Ecuador when the Chinese government offered to build Ecuador its new hydroelectric Dam they were likely thrilled with the idea it was 7 years after China's Three Gorges Dam opens and three gorges has remained the world's largest and most impressive Dam construction on the Coca Coda Sinclair Dam lasted for 6 years and in 2016 it was finally ready to open but in 2014 long before it opens a number of cracks were noticed in the Dam's generator Hall and surrounding equipment of course that's not necessarily anything anything to worry about three gorges was reported as having 80 hairline cracks in it shortly after opening but it was still deemed to be of good quality construction by experts however the problem at Coca-Cola was much worse than 80 hairline cracks in late 2018 two years after the dam became operational there were 7,648 cracks discovered it was a combination of small and large cracks and it's certainly a cause for concern that's almost certainly not all the cracks in the dam either in order to do a full investigation to find all of these cracks it would require them to deconstruct parts of the dam which is just too expensive the dam hasn't failed yet at least not in the sense of the walls bursting but there have been other disastrous consequences because the dam releases water that's free of sediment it results in exceptionally high levels of erosion Downstream from the dam this erosion has destroyed Ecuador's largest waterfall it's in the process of destroying the village of San Lis and it is believed but not confirmed to be the direct cause of two oil spills once in 2022 and once in 2023 oil pipelines that ran along the river slipped off the bank and into the river allegedly because of the erosion the dam had caused the two spills resulted in a combined 16,200 barrels of oil burn spilled into the river not only is it believed that further erosion will continue to undermine the infrastructure of the oil pipelines but it could undermine the stability of the dam itself itself if you ever a look at a picture of the xi- Ching District Skyline you're likely to see one distinct building towering over the rest and that building is golden Finance 117 a property owned by Golden Financial Holdings Limited in 2008 China State construction engineering corporation began construction on the ambitious project the proposed skyscraper was going to have 128 stories above ground giving it a total height of 597 M or 1,957 ft it was going to be a mixed use building with 117 floors of the building used as a combination of housing hotels and commercial space hence the name the luxury building was indicator exclusively to the super wealthy which led to concerns about whether or not the project was actually going to be economically viable but before these concerns could be silence they needed to finish construction and open the building first and well maybe someday they will originally golden Finance 117 was lated to be completed in 2014 after 6 years of construction however thanks to the Great Recession construction was halted in January of 2010 over a year later construction finally resumed but this time the completion date was pushed back to 2019 an additional 4 years of work compared to the original estimate for a few years things were going great construction continued as scheduled and by September of 2015 the building was topped out the top 40 or so floors weren't even close to being completed but at least the skyscrapers framework was finished once it was topped out it became the fifth tallest building in the world at the time it has since been knocked into sixth place by 2 m unfortunately for the future of this building golden Financial fell into financial difficulties following the 2015 Chinese stock market crash they were forced to suspend construction just a few months after after the building was topped out and it is yet to resume for the past 8 years golden Finance 117 has remained empty with a crane perched top the building's framework following this and other failed skyscrapers the Chinese government eventually cracked down on such over ambitious projects the government placed a ban on the construction of any buildings over 500 meters in height golden Finance 117 may not go down in history as one of China's most successful Mega projects but it is currently in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's tallest unoccupied building so they're probably thrilled about [Music] that

Channel: Sideprojects

Views: 1,250,201

Keywords: megaprojects, construction, engineering, projects, sideprojects, difficult mega projects, impossible mega projects, mega projects, difficult construction projects, impossible projects, impossible construction projects, megaprojects in the world, construction fails

Id: 519ehrr8RBY

Length: 13min 39sec (819 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2023