Huge mall in Chenggdu

[Rock]

I guess this has been open awhile but didn't exist back when I was in Chengdu. Anyone been there. Make MOA in Metro Manila seem tiny by comparison.



zboy, did you ever make it out to New South China Mall which used to be the biggest and is supposedly over 95% vacant? That would be an interesting sight.

[zboy1]

Rock, I didn't even know a mall like that even existed in Chengdu, lol. There's a lot of half-empty buildings, apartment building, offices and malls all over China, so it's not surprising news to me.

[gnosis]

There's a lot of half-empty buildings, apartment building, offices and malls all over China, so it's not surprising news to me.

Why is this? I've heard lots of stories about "ghost" cities. Is it because of government stimulus projects or something? There's no actual market demand for the malls/buildings, but the government encourages people to build them to stimulate/simulate economic growth?

[zboy1]

Yeah, part of it is stimulus, part of it is corruption. Local governments are given money by the Chinese government for infrastructure, which then gets siphoned off and diverted for shady real estate deals.

Happens all the time in China.

[Yohan]

http://knowledge.ckgsb.edu.cn/2015/06/0 ... pers-gone/

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/03/busin ... gest-mall/

One of several reports regarding shopping malls in China. Plenty of empty shop space, lack of customers.
Often companies are unwilling to move in and open a shop because of high rent - space in shopping mall is not so cheap...

A huge population does not mean automatically plenty of customers obviously... walking around and looking is not the same as entering a shop and buying...

It is not so easy to find any alternative to replace partially empty shops, even empty floors with something else... like cinemas, schools for this or that, bowling, medical clinics, sportclub+pool etc.

[gnosis]

Does anybody have any idea how much of China's apparent economic growth is real, and how much is illusory? I wonder how much longer the PRC will be able to play the game they are playing.

[Yohan]

I think, nobody really knows, even not in China, there is too much censorship in general, too many data are bogus, exchange rates are controlled by the state, laws are changed arbitrarily, private land-ownership does not exist - There are only estimates possible.

Financially the worldbank considers China ranking as #96 out of 217 countries with an income of about USD 7820,- per person/year, and adding purchasing power does not change the ranking so much to the better, more to the worse #107 with USD 14.160,- per person/year.
http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GNIPC.pdf

This is not that bad considering the financial situation in Asia in general, however wealth is badly distributed in China.

http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/report-c ... of-wealth/

A new report from one of China’s top universities found that wealth and income inequality in the country is getting steadily worse. According to the report, one-third of the country’s wealth is owned by the top 1 percent of households, while the bottom 25 percent account for only 1 percent of wealth.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/03/ ... aper-says/

A widening gap between China’s rich and poor makes it “one of the most unequal countries in the world,” according to a new working paper published by the International Monetary Fund.
.....
Although per-capita income has grown and the number of people living on less than a $1.25 a day has plummeted, income inequality has skyrocketed, the economists said. The top quintile of earners now pull in nearly half of total income while the poorest quintile of earners account for under 5%.

[Johnny1975]

Wercome to China, whele peopre smarr, but buirding big.