The Mystery of China's "Ghost Cities" -- Solved at Last? (And coming to a place near you, too?)

Many of you are no doubt aware that China has been building vast "Ghost Cities" in the middle of nowhere: Empty blocks of unoccupied housing. This topic has been covered before numerous times on ATS, as a simple search will reveal.

But until this week, we had little to go on regarding the true purpose of these structures, and they seemed to hover eerily empty. Now, however, evidence seems to be emerging that they are filling up fast, at the rate of 250,000 people per week!:

The Chinese government is in the process of relocating 250,000 people per week from rural farmlands to densely populated urban areas into what has been dubbed as the Chinese ghost towns....Although the Chinese government and a select few globalist corporations claim that the Chinese urban population migration is fueled by the need for workers, other Chinese experts tell a different story....

...Chinese political refugee and Princeton University professor, Cheng Xiaonong, stated in that in lots of places in China, farmers are being forcibly relocated at gunpoint and forced to relocate to urban areas. Cheng said, “[Party chief] Bo Xilai has been promoting a policy of moving farmers into towns, building apartments and moving forcibly relocated farmers into these stack and pack apartments and treating this as urbanization.” ... These relocated farmers, without the prospect of jobs is a recipe for economic and social disaster. Soon, there will be tens of millions of Chinese totally dependent on government handouts to survive. This is the power that governments strive to obtain because it gives them total control....

Much more at source

In a nutshell, this looks to be a Chinese manifestation of Agenda 21, a global plan to centralize the human population in urban mega-cities by forcing people to move out of rural communities...at gunpoint, as in China, if necessary, or by other means ranging from the gentle to the coercive.

Agenda 21 is a United-Nation sanctioned measure, but behind it lurk the usual suspects: It is heavily supported by elites ranging from big Wall Street names on the right to environmentalists on the left. If you live in a rural area, they are squeezing you from the left and the right simultaneously! "Conservative" and "Liberal" have no meaning at the top of the pyramid. Its a puppet show to keep you from peeking behind the curtain of true power!

And China is not the only place this is happening, of course. For an eye-opening read, see:
The Forced Depopulation of America's Rural Areas

Obama's Plan to Depopulate the Suburbs

Why is this happening in China, America, and around the globe simultaneously? Ahh, that is for you to decide, ATS. Some would say its a means of herding us all into urban enclaves so we can be wiped out in accordance with the global depopulation agenda of the elites. This is certainly possible, but I remain unconvinced. Personally, I think they just want to make it easier to controll people. Stack 'em and pack 'em, get rid of the "gun nuts," digitize everything, use factory farming in the countryside, and have a total lockdown on human freedom, where our every move is monitored and controled by biometrics, survalience, and other hi-tech hijinks.

Remember what Orwell taught us in "1984": Power itself is the ultimate aim of all elites. It is a heady, intoxicating brew, and the more centralized people are, the easier they are to control, leading to ever-greater potential power from the center.

Or in Orwell's own words from 1984:

..."The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power...

"How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?"

Winston thought. "By making him suffer," he said.

"Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy- everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. ...there will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always-do not forget this, Winston-always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-forever."

Happy trails, kids....

I thought these buildings were in Africa, built by the Chinese.

That's how the author of the last thread that talked about it made it seem. So, where exactly are these ghost towns?

Alot of the people who live in rural China are poverty stricken.
Maybe this is China's answer to public housing for these people, instead of an army of homeless migrating to the cities.

Originally posted by silent thunder
The Chinese government is in the process of relocating 250,000 people per week from rural farmlands to densely populated urban areas...

Relocating?
Forcibly relocating, by the sound of the rest of his blog.

But whats his **SOURCE** for this claim?

It appears to be totally reliant on this quote here from Barton:

What we’re basically seeing is more than 250,000 people moving from rural areas to cities every week.”

But that sound more like people just moving to city of thier own volition.
Furthermore, there is nowhere in any of that which shows this movement is towards the "ghost cities".

Dave Hodge's claim is completely unfounded, as he tries to twist it to:

moving one million people per month to the ghost cities

reply to post by skepticconwatcher


they even had google maps on it and everything

Originally posted by skepticconwatcher
I thought these buildings were in Africa, built by the Chinese.

That's how the author of the last thread that talked about it made it seem. So, where exactly are these ghost towns?

They are in China and ALSO Africa, interestingly. My original post is about Chinese being relocated to Ghost Cities within China. BUT you are correct, they are also being built in Africa...

China has destroyed much of its best cropland in its mad dash to industrialize over the last 30 years or so. They have over a billion mouths to feed. There is no doubt China (as well as Japan, Korea, the US, and Europe) are eying Africa as a future source of farmland. Perhaps the Chinese plan to relocate many of their citizens there to "plant the flag" and grab as much land as they can before the rest of the world realizes how rapidly good farmland elsewhere is being destroyed or depleted of nutrients...

reply to post by skepticconwatcher


They are also building these places in Africa as was correctly stated in the thread that you refer to. The influx of chinese to Africa has surged, here in Namibia most of the big construction work, not ghost towns they haven't started to build any of those here yet, is now being done by chinese companies with chinese labour while local construction companies are struggling to compete with them as they "seem" to have connections which make them the preferred bidder when tenders came up for large governmental contracts!

reply to post by silent thunder


This is exactly what is happening!

They are becoming more and more numerous by the day!

Originally posted by alfa1
Relocating?
Forcibly relocating, by the sound of the rest of his blog.

But whats his **SOURCE** for this claim?

Check the quote in the first post: "relocated AT GUNPOINT." And it comes from a Princeton professor, not some dude in his basement.

Originally posted by silent thunder
Check the quote in the first post: "relocated AT GUNPOINT." And it comes from a Princeton professor, not some dude in his basement.

Sorry, still cant find the "relocating 250,000 people per week" part of that claim.

Furthermore, the "moved at gunpoint" claim comes from a quote by the University professor in which he says:

Bo Xilai has been promoting a policy of moving farmers into towns...

1. Cannot find a single place to backup this quote, other than this Dave Hodges blog.
2. Bo Xilai was expelled from the Communist party last year after a corruption scandal.
3. Wikipedia says

In 2007, the cities of Chongqing and Chengdu were selected to run pilot projects intended to mitigate the rural-urban divide and ease integration of rural residents into the cities.

So its not at all clear to me that any such urbanisation policy of Bo Xilai was ever outside of two test trial locations, and does not represent the "China" policy that the blog is asserting.

reply to post by silent thunder


I don't understand. If the purpose is to centralize, i.e. remove everyone from the rural areas - away from farms - to make them dependent on the evil Government - where will all the food come from? Who is going to produce the produce, livestock and grain, i.e. the life force of any country, if there is no one left on the farms?

for starters agenda 21 really ? did you even read the pdf?

who knows why they built these cities , maybe they don't like the asbestos and wanted to use a cleaner technology.

people who live in urban area generally don't have the poverty rate that rural areas do .

also just because a princton professor make a s claim still really doesn't make it true .

maybe if shtf the government was planning ahead instead of rebuilding a city they can just relocate to a new one . or they are planning for the future while trade is good and money is coming in that people will be coming out of the woods to seek jobs for money to support their families .

who knows with how tight china is on anything that goes on there I doubt we will not know for a long time it is still all just speculation

reply to post by LeLeu

Why is the Australian Government paying Farmers to leave the land.
Is there not a global food shortage.

Or has it something to do with what the article states....Agenda 21. I'll go with that.

Originally posted by keenasbro
reply to post by LeLeu

 

Why is the Australian Government paying Farmers to leave the land.
Is there not a global food shortage.

Or has it something to do with what the article states....Agenda 21. I'll go with that.

perhaps the government want to monopolize farming control resources , or of course they want to starve off the poor population who cannot afford 100 for a liter of milk or 200 for a loaf of bread who knows . or maybe they are in a flood zone or a dry zone and are getting tired of paying for insurance for lose of crops from poor choice of farming

why not ask your government why they are doing it

For those who keeps saying it came from a blog, here's a take from the NYTimes.

China's Great Uprooting

BEIJING — China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years — a transformative event that could set off a new wave of growth or saddle the country with problems for generations to come.

The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers. So large is the scale that the number of brand-new Chinese city dwellers will approach the total urban population of the United States — in a country already bursting with megacities.

This will decisively change the character of China, where the Communist Party insisted for decades that most peasants, even those working in cities, remain tied to their tiny plots of land to ensure political and economic stability. Now, the party has shifted priorities, mainly to find a new source of growth for a slowing economy that depends increasingly on a consuming class of city dwellers.

The shift is occurring so quickly, and the potential costs are so high, that some fear rural China is once again the site of radical social engineering...

Click on link above for more.

We also cannot forget about the economic reasons for building these,
construction is used to fuel economies even when it isn't needed,
there was an interesting article about this a while back, talking about
chinas housing bubble, which these were part of, basically they were
building to make it look like there was this great demand when in
reality the demand was fiction, the median income of most Chinese
is not enough to purchase one of the newer homes, the jest of the
article was that china was pretty much in the same spot the US was
during its housing bubble, too many houses that were far too over
priced.

Originally posted by keenasbro
reply to post by LeLeu

 

Why is the Australian Government paying Farmers to leave the land.
Is there not a global food shortage.

Or has it something to do with what the article states....Agenda 21. I'll go with that.

The only farmers getting a hard time from the government here are the irrigators raping the Murray river water resources in Victoria and New South Wales.

reply to post by silent thunder


I got halfway through the first article and had to give up.

The sheer number of lies was breathtaking. This guy clearly has no shame and no conscience.

The question has been asked; where will the food come from? Simple, factory farming and outside sources. China is a global importer of food products except US GMO which is baned.

The ghost cities are quite impressive if you have ever been to one. Everything is there just no people. The Chinese are still building like no tomorrow and there are not enough buyers for all the apartment complexes as is and the price for an apartment is outrageous. Some places are asking 18,000+ CNY per square meter for an apartment that is only 50% completed.

The ghost cities apartments are the same, no basic fixtures, no lights, no flooring (uneven rough concrete) and not even habitable. Once the farmers are moved into the cities, there is no jobs for them, only social welfare. Anyone that thinks that China wouldn't forcibly move people into the cities is woefully naive.

Originally posted by Gemwolf
reply to post by silent thunder

 

I don't understand. If the purpose is to centralize, i.e. remove everyone from the rural areas - away from farms - to make them dependent on the evil Government - where will all the food come from? Who is going to produce the produce, livestock and grain, i.e. the life force of any country, if there is no one left on the farms?

Out scourced, buying up all farmland in both New Zealand and Australia. This is the Agenda 21 stratergy .Have nothing produced on own soil for National Use. Doing this with other rescources to. Compartmenting and controlling.