China growing … and growing … 21
From Australia’s SBS Dateline, an amazing documentary about China’s ghost cities.
64 million vacant properties.
Shopping malls 99% empty.
Meanwhile, people living in overcrowded slums. One man who is interviewed lives with his wife in a room at the end of a narrow alley, had to send his daughter to live with grandparents so he sees her only once a year, shares one sink and a toilet with all his neighbors in the alley, and wants the government to provide everyone with a home as “a human right”.
But of course, as a Western observer points out in the video, the entire absurd situation is a result of a centrally planned economy.
One two-bedroom apartment houses 9 people including a married couple and a government property developer who has to share a bed. He tells the interviewer that he cannot comment as he’d get into trouble for saying what he thinks.
A sociologist fears that the communist government’s policy is creating such dangerous social division that “poor people may come out and start a revolution”.
