China’s Replica Ghost towns

IN Rigged-Tech
  • Updated:2 years ago
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Might seem a bit random to be interested in this, considering what’s going on in the world, but it was actually from a post going around messenger at the moment that had a rather unbelievable (although “anything is possible these days“) conspiracy claim, and whilst I don’t think it holds any weight, and I’m not going to spend too much time on it as I have too many other topics I’m working on right now and if there is a war, I think it would have a different end-goal than what was claimed, I clicked on the video that was attached and got interested enough to look at these ghost cities for a couple of hours and I thought I’d just post the notes here.

If you haven’t seen the message going around, I wouldn’t be too worried – there wasn’t any verifiable references to believe (hearsay, bar-talk, no reason to believe that it might be plausible), I was just interested in these ghost towns anyway after watching the video.

At first glance it makes no sense, isn’t it a bit strange / peculiar / bizarre / weird that there would be all these empty new cities without people living in it when there are millions of Chinese people living below poverty?

Well, most of the videos I watched all had some pretty valid reasons (a corrupt government for one, greedy building developers, and some other interesting ideas…) not that I can trust any YouTube video as a reference given the times we’re in when nothing you see on these networks can be believed, but for “interest’s sake”, it was an interesting few hours.

60 Minutes Documentary - 2013

Inside China’s ghost cities | 60 Minutes Australia

This is the video that was linked to the message that got me interested in China’s ghost towns.

Video description: In 2013, 60 Minutes visited China’s eerie ghost towns. An entire city – all the buildings, the roads, schools, hospitals, you name it – except the people. There is not a soul to be seen.

Housing Crisis - 2021

Housing Crisis — China’s Reckoning (Part 2)

This video explains the plausible (but still peculiar) reason as to why these cities are empty.

If I can remember correctly, it spoke of how the CCP Govt tracks foreign spending, the culture unable to invest in foreign manufacturing / putting value on housing (that a lot of the middle class own 2-3 houses due to govt having an incentive for people to buy homes at lower interest rates?), the one-child policy that stuffed up the generations that are now without women and (so the women can demand better or are more picky about housing… ie. fierce competition for marriage, and owning a property is one of the most important elements of social-status), and via government corruption … ie. that their censorship means the people don’t really know what’s going on with the housing market, lotteries they have for new building developments where the winners only have a few hours to put down a deposit, and local governments who are trying to circumvent the CCP’s / Beijing’s central government way of doing things (something to do with gov owning land and then allocating a third-party controlled by themselves the land, and profiting from it that way). I’d have to watch it again to make sure I was right in that summary.

Why 50 Million Chinese Homes are Empty - 2018

Why 50 Million Chinese Homes are Empty

They say that approx 50 million units or 22% of China’s entire urban housing are not lived in. This video is made by the same people who did the updated video above, so the storyline is pretty much the same, but this time I missed the other reason which was that Beijing – the central govt creates all the laws, and the Local gov have to enforce them, each doing it differently, and that the local govt only gets 40% of the income but are responsible for 80% of the expenses so they need another form of income.

In China, rural land is collectively owned, everyone and also no one owns it, which means it can’t be the location for a new luxury apartment, but cities have the power to rezone land from rural to urban, which can be developed.

First, a city buys cheap rural land which it then redefines as urban and sells it to developers at a higher price. It also adds to the other video, mentioning that property tax is 0%, and that communities pool their savings together to help each other buy houses (due to the one child policy).

Video Description: China’s housing bubble has left 50 million homes empty and put its government between a rock and a hard place.

China's Empty Cities House 64 Million Empty Apartments - 2011

China’s Empty Cities House 64 Million Empty Apartments

Interesting perspective of a journalist who interviews some of the locals who live in poverty, one couple lives in 1 room with a communal toilet/sink, work 6 days a week and can’t afford to buy the expensive empty apartments just down the road, and only get to see their daughter once a year. Insanity.

Video Description: Ghost Cities: China continues to build vast cities, but they remain almost completely uninhabited ghost towns.

China's competition for living space | DW Documentary - 2021

China’s competition for living space | DW Documentary

Video Description: More than 60 percent of China’s population of 1.4 billion currently lives in cities. Within a decade, the share of urban dwellers is expected to increase to 75 percent. Construction is booming and competition for residential land is fierce. But the right to live in a city in China is conditional.

Authorities want their modern cities to be peopled with well-educated, highly-qualified or politically well-connected residents. As a result, certain standards have to be met to be eligible for a modern, urban home.

Only members of China’s political classes and the financially successful have a hope of qualifying. Yet more than half of the people who live in cities are so-called “migrant workers.”

They come from rural communities and have no official rights to settle in cities. They are there to work. With no proper rights, they are merely tolerated while they serve as merchants, servants, waitstaff, cleaners, construction workers and tradespeople. But while they are indispensable to daily life in the cities, they are unable to afford their exorbitant rents.

This documentary looks at how and where these workers live, and asks whether middle and working class Chinese even figure in the official vision of shiny, high-tech cities. The filmmakers also look at what happens to those who oppose official plans, or stand in the way of the building boom.

China Builds Fake Paris, London and Jackson Hole - 2016

China Builds Fake Paris, London and Jackson Hole | An Inside Look

This video sells the Replicas as if it’s a way to escape communism? Saying that it gives people choices. *scratches head*

Population of Australia - 26 million

The current population of Australia is approximately 26 million. (09) (10)

Chinese Military Personnel - 2-3 Million estimated

The Chinese military has the largest standing ground force in the world (approximately 915,000 active-duty personnel in combat units & two million personnel in the regular forces), the largest navy in the world (battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines), and one of the largest forces of advanced long-range surface-to-air systems (over 2,500 total aircraft of which approximately 2,000 are combat aircraft (including fighters, strategic bombers, tactical bombers, multi-mission tactical, and attack aircraft) – not including their Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). (11)

According to a different website China’s military size was over 2.6 million in 2018. (12)

  • China military size for 2018 was 2,695,000
  • China military size for 2017 was 2,695,000
  • China military size for 2016 was 2,695,000
  • China military size for 2015 was 2,843,000

Another website suggests that China is fast trending towards becoming the primary global military adversary to the United States in 2022 – that it’s currently number 3 next to Russia, and that the current estimate of manpower is 3,134,000(13)

Electronic, Space, Cyber & Information Warfare

Electronic, Space, AI, Cyber & Information Warfare (14)

Information Operations (IO). China assesses that controlling the information spectrum in the modern battlespace is a critical enabler, if not a fundamental prerequisite, of its ability to counter thirdparty intervention in a conflict. PLA authors often cite this capability – sometimes termed “information blockade” or “information dominance” – as necessary to seize the initiative and set the conditions necessary to gain air and sea superiority. This “information blockade” concept likely envisions combining military capabilities across space and cyber domains with non-military instruments of state power. China’s investment in advanced electronic warfare (EW) systems, counterspace capabilities, and cyber operations – combined with more traditional forms of information control, such as propaganda and denial via opacity – reflect the priority the PLA places on information advantage.

Space and Counterspace. PLA strategists regard the ability to use space-based systems – and to deny them to adversaries – as central to modern warfare. The PLA continues to strengthen its military space capabilities, despite its public stance against the militarization of space. The PLA views space operations as a key enabler of PLA campaigns aimed at countering third-party intervention, although many PLA writings have not elevated these operations to the level of a separate “campaign.” China seeks to enhance C2 in joint operations and establish a real-time surveillance, reconnaissance, and warning system, and it is increasing the number and capabilities of its space systems, including various communications and intelligence satellites as well as the Beidou navigation satellite system. China also continues to develop counterspace capabilities and related technologies, including kinetic-kill missiles, ground-based lasers, and orbiting space robots, as well as expanding space surveillance capabilities, which can monitor objects across the globe and in space and enable counterspace actions.

Cyber Operations. PLA researchers believe that building strong cyber capabilities are necessary to protect Chinese networks and advocate seizing “cyberspace superiority” by using offensive cyber operations to deter or degrade an adversary’s ability to conduct military operations against China. Chinese writings suggest cyber operations allow China to manage the escalation of a conflict because cyber attacks are a low-cost deterrent. The writings also suggest that cyber attacks demonstrate capabilities and resolve to an adversary. To support A2/AD, Chinese cyber attack operations aim to target critical military and civilian nodes to deter or disrupt adversary intervention, and to retain the option to scale these attacks to achieve desired conditions with minimal strategic cost. China believes its cyber capabilities and cyber personnel lag behind the United States, and it is working to improve training and bolster domestic innovation to overcome these perceived deficiencies and advance cyberspace operations.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence. China views AI as critical to its future military and industrial power. China is making strategic investments worldwide in AI to reap national security and economic benefits. AI is a central component in many of China’s publicly released national plans. The Next Generation AI Plan details China’s AI strategy and outlines China’s goals of using commercial and military entities to gain parity with the world leaders in AI by 2020, achieving major breakthroughs in AI by 2025, and establishing China as the global leader in AI by 2030. The PRC is pursuing a whole-of-society effort to become a global leader in AI, which includes designating select private AI companies in China as “AI champions” to emphasize R&D in specific dual-use technologies. Many of these “AI champions,” including Huawei and Hikvision, are major suppliers of AI surveillance technology worldwide. In 2019, the private PRC-based company Ziyan UAV exhibited armed swarming drones that it claimed use AI to perform autonomous guidance, target acquisition, and attack execution. During the past five years, China has made achievements in AI-enabled unmanned surface vessels, which China plans to use to patrol and bolster its territorial claims in the South China Sea. China has also tested unmanned tanks as part of research efforts to integrate AI into ground forces’ equipment.

The 2017 National Artificial Intelligence Plan describes steps for China to become the “world’s major AI innovation center” by 2030 and calls for the country to accelerate the integration of AI with the economy, society, and national defense. The plan foresees a great expansion in the “breadth and depth of AI applications in… national defense construction.”

Other plans address the development of various sectors of China’s robust Internet ecosystem, including cloud computing, big data, e-commerce, and next-generation broadband wireless communications networks, including fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks. Due to information sharing requirements with the PRC’s security services as required by PRC laws, worldwide expansion of 5G networks by PRC companies will challenge the security and resiliency of other countries’ networks. (15)

China is second largest foreign owner of land in Australia - 2019

  • Over past decade, China has poured billions into Australia to extend influence
  • It owns an airport in Western Australia and nine million hectares of farm land
  • China also owns Port of Darwin and several Australian coalmines and windfarms
  • China is the second largest foreign owner of land in Australia

China is buying up Australian land, infrastructure and businesses at an alarming rate as it seeks to project power and influence beyond its shores.

The communist nation of 1.4billion people owns an airport in Western Australia, nine million hectares of Australian land, several Aussie coalmines and wind farms and even the Port of Darwin, a key strategic asset.

China is also the largest foreign owner of Australian water and has projected soft power Down Under by planting Communist Party-approved Mandarin teachers in schools and universities.

In 1993, China’s biggest airline, state-owned China Southern Airlines, paid the Western Australian government $1 to lease Merredin airport for 100 years to use as a training school for its pilots. Dick Smith: ‘It is outrageous that an Aussie pilot can’t go to a country airport without getting approval from the Chinese to land there,’

In November 2015, the Northern Territory government decided to lease the Port of Darwin – now known as Darwin Port – to a Chinese company for 99 years.

China is the second largest foreign owner of land in Australia with Chinese companies in control of 2.3 per cent of the nation’s soil.

Investors from the the United Kingdom own more with 2.6 per cent and buyers from the US are third with 0.7 per cent, according to the 2018 Register Of Foreign Ownership.

Most of the foreign-owned land is in Western Australia and the Northern Territory and is used for cattle farming.   

Between 2017 and 2018, Chinese companies added 50,000 hectares to their Australian property portfolio.

It took the total to more than 9.1million hectares – roughly the size of 9million soccer fields.

Interesting: How Australia Is Crashing the World Economy & Taking Down China

How Australia Is Crashing the World Economy And Taking Down China

I don’t believe this fully, but I do believe that globalists / centralized governments / CCP / Communism / Dictatorships making “one decision” can create a worldwide crisis.

Video Description: This is the Australian ship called…the topas. In June of 2020 this ship left the port of Queensland in Australia with 90,000 tons of coal as its cargo. Its destination was the port of Jingtang, where it was set to unload its coal, and then travel back to Australia over the course of a few days. But that’s not what happened.

Because once the topas reached the port of jingtang, it was not allowed into the Chinese port. So, it waited. One month passed, two months, 6 months, then 10 months. eventually, and the ship, and all its crew found itself being stranded at sea for nearly an entire year, with no end in sight.

And as it turns out, this event would foreshadow one of the biggest economic issues….that we are currently witnessing today.

But to explain why this event was so important, and why its creating a global crisis today…you must know that this crisis that we are currently experiencing… may have actually started with a small bird, just a few decades ago. A bird, that caused one of the biggest crises in history.

China humiliated in the Pacific | Small countries reject china's deal - 2022

Gravitas Live | China humiliated in the Pacific | Small Pacific countries reject china’s deal | WION

Other Links

Lots of fairly unsorted links in relation to China owning Australia and it’s corrupt influence over a certain Victorian Premier / Chinese Puppet and it’s influence and ownership of much of Australia in my Downloads folders when I was first trying to learn everything about a year ago.

I have no inclination to go deep-diving into those folders tonight (there are 13 folders labelled “China”). In any case, I’m sure there are far more thorough and deep-diving researchers than me – I had no idea what I was looking for when I was first trying to learn so would recommend looking for people who are more military-minded or economics-minded in their research area.

References[+]

Penny (PennyButler.com)
Penny (PennyButler.com)

Truth-seeker, ever-questioning, ever-learning, ever-researching, ever delving further and deeper, ever trying to 'figure it out'. This site is a legacy of sorts, a place to collect thoughts, notes, book summaries, & random points of interests.