Chinese scale cities and monuments

I remembered the other day hearing about China building scale models of western cities and monuments including the white house and other Washington DC buildings and it got me thinking, but I really couldn't come up with any reason I could think of for them toto be building these things. Apparently they are in the works of constructing a scale Manhattan complete with world trade centers, how odd huh? Some of the theories out there involve military training and China's desire to show their world dominance, but there has to be a better reason. So I searched here at ATS and wasn't able to find a post on this, there probably is one somewhere but I couldn't find it, and I am curious what some of you folks make of this?

China's copycat cities

Thats pretty creepy yet very interesting.

I wonder what it is about copying, would one rather not create new REAL works of art and buildings?

reply to post by TheCrimsonGhost


I don't believe there is any reason for concern. You can easily get digital data in 3-D of just about anything. The scale model is a fetish of sorts. They have a scale model of the entire city of Shanghai in the city hall. It's immense. I've seen it.

Now if they built a full scale model and were training military with it? That would be curious.

Considering the Chinese make counterfeits of everything from medicine to BMW's I'm not really surprised.
It seems like that's what they do.

So when they kill off the rest of the planets populations they wont be freaked out by living in the new empty cities.

Though i doubt its anything more sinister than experiencing the world without having to leave and see it (also its not covered in smelly Europeans and Americans)

reply to post by InverseLookingGlass


I agree, scale modeling is very addicting, I used to LOVE to build models

It says in the article the same people that designed the world trade center were involved in creating the scale model of it for the Manhattan copy, thought that was pretty interesting.

So what if they are building American cities in another dimension... I mean, yikes! Hide the shrink ray gun or we'll all live in aquariums in China soon!!! or whichever fits best...

Copying is what they do and the word innovation is not in their vocabulary. If you ask them which is correct:

A. 1+1=2
B. 1+1=3
C. 1+1=5
D. 1+1=15
E. 1+1=0

they will tell you that A is correct and all the others are wrong. However, if you tell them that all are correct, they will tell you NO, only "A" is correct. They can not comprehend that there are variables than can make all answers correct. This is due to the way they are taught. The school system teaches them an answer and not how to discover the answer. When it comes to tests, they study the answers and not the material.

While teaching at one of their universities, when it came to final exams, the students would ask me which questions would be on the exam. The Chinese teachers would give them the questions to study but my answer was, study the material and your notes from my lectures. Their marks after the exams told the truth of the matter.

That being said, building scale models of things can be an exciting and rewarding hobby and for those that cannot afford the actual item, a model is the next best thing.