This video was made possible by Dashlane. You can try Dashlane for free on your first
device by heading to Dashlane.com/HAI Hey guys; I have exciting news: I’m throwing
a party, and it starts right now! I contacted all my friends, and I told them
to meet me at my house. I have to imagine it’s getting pretty crowded,
so let’s take a look. Hey everybody! How’s it---
Where… where is everyone? Guys? Brian from Real Engineering? Joseph from Real Life Lore? Thomas Frank from…whatever his channel’s
called? Oh, now I remember: I didn’t invite anyone
to a party, I don’t have any friends, and this isn’t my house; this is the Kangbashi
District of Ordos City, the $161 billion ghost city China built for 1 million people that
nobody showed up to. This is Inner Mongolia—named such because
it is not an inner part of Mongolia, but instead an outer part of China—and this is Ordos
City, named such because it is not a city, but instead an administrative district. And this is Ordos’ main urban area, the
Dongsheng District, named such for a reason I didn’t want to bother looking up. Ordos is one of China’s wealthiest areas,
with its economic prosperity mainly fueled by…well, fuel—specifically the massive
reserves of coal and natural gas on which it sits. And its Dongsheng District was a thriving,
well-populated area—but around 2003, China thought to themselves, “what if we made
this same thing, except more expensive and 16 miles away in the middle of the Gobi Desert?” And so, they did, beginning work on a massive
new urban area called the Kangbashi District, and it’s beautiful—built for a million
residents, and complete with a museum that looks like Samuel L Jackson’s hat, an opera
house that looks like Muammar Gadaffi’s hat, and tons and tons of luxury apartment
buildings that look like…well, apartment buildings; not everything can look like a
hat. The only problem with all these beautiful
hat-like and non hat-like buildings was, nobody showed up to them. To understand how China ended up with a massive,
gleaming, elaborate, empty supercity, there are three main things you need to understand. The first is the Chinese government’s ongoing
push to urbanize. That’s right, China has been spending decades
trying to become more like Karl Urban. I mean it makes sense, he was Judge Dredd,
but also, they’ve been trying to move away from their agrarian past, and to have more
people living in cities. Now China is run by a Communist government,
which is easy to forget sometimes given all the capitalism there—but nonetheless, to
a certain extent, the economy is still planned by the Chinese Communist Party. That means that unlike in the US, where real
estate trends are governed almost exclusively by the free market, in China, real estate
is more planned out—so the government can plan to build a massive city, and then direct
its resources towards making that happen. The second things is that the Chinese government
really really really really wants to see high GDP growth year over year. They view GDP sort of like people view the
Fast and Furious franchise: They just want things to get bigger and bigger and bigger
until they reach something crazy, like the world’s largest economy or skydiving in
cars. Now, China has shown enormous success in growing
GDP, but also like the Fast and Furious movies, sometimes they sort of have to force things
forward in an unnatural and contrived way, and one way that China turbo-boosts its economy
is by maintaining an extremely active real estate industry. In fact, some estimates put real estate development
as 20-30% of the entire economy. One often cited statistic is that in a period
of three years, from 2011-2013, China poured more cement than the United States did during
the entire 20th century. Another interesting statistic is in that same
three years, the United States produced more episodes of the TV show Game of Thrones than
anyone in the world did in the 20th century. Really makes you think, huh? The third thing you need to understand is
that the emerging Chinese middle class doesn’t have a lot of investment opportunities. Unlike in the US, where nearly anyone can
go ahead and throw their life savings into whatever risky and predatory investment system
they want—personally, my strategy is to send bitcoin to benevolent billionaires on
Twitter—it’s actually very difficult for Chinese nationals to invest in foreign markets—plus,
the Chinese stock market is extremely volatile; like, about as volatile as the level of quality
in seasons of Game of Thrones. So, when China began to allow private home
ownership in 1998, property became the main way middle-class Chinese people could invest—and
that’s what’s lead to one of the most remarkable things about this ghost city: all
of these empty apartment buildings you see aren’t really failures, at least not for
the developers, because nearly all of them have been sold to Chinese people looking not
to live there, but to invest in real estate. What happened, then, is pretty simple: the
Chinese government wanted real estate to be built, so they were willing to encourage that
building through easily obtainable loans for developers, developers were willing to build
cities because the loans were easy to get and they expected to be able to sell apartments
easily to middle class Chinese, and middle class Chinese were willing to buy those apartments,
as investments, because it’s their only real way to invest, and the Chinese real estate
market has historically always increased in value. So you had a source of capital, a builder,
and a buyer: all that was missing were people to actually live there…and political freedom,
that was missing too, but that’s sort of the deal in all of China. As of 2010, when the city was completed, there
were between 20-30,000 people in an area built for a million. Since then, the numbers have grown a bit,
and there are about 200,000 residents; still 1/5 of its capacity, but then again, these
days, 1/5 capacity is sort of a good thing. The Chinese Communist Government has a lot
of things on its plate—planning the world’s second largest economy, getting ready for
the 2022 Winter Olympics, jailing political prisoners; they don’t have time to do things
like remember passwords to all their different accounts. For that, they need Dashlane. Dashlane is a mobile and desktop app that
gives you a shortcut for everything you do online—it stores all your info, and then
auto-fills personal and payment details with one click whenever you need them, it provides
personalized security alerts in response to hacks or breaches, and it works seamlessly
across all your devices—whether you have a Windows, Mac, iPhone, or Android. Trust me—it just makes everything a little
easier. And if you want to try it out, I have great
news: there’s no credit card required at signup and you can try Dashlane for free on
your first device by heading to Dashlane.com/HAI.
One day, I wanna beat u/loonling and post a HAI video first.
On what planet is 200,000 people "(almost) nobody" and an "empty city"?
How about this title:
Why it takes 10+ years for people to move into huge Chinese cities
or
Why it takes 10+ years to reach 20% capacity in new Chinese cities
or
Why China massively overbuilds cities, 10+ years in advance
or something along those lines? Otherwise a very informative and interesting video, thank you for creating it. :)
Current title + preview image feels like click-bait / misleading :(