Sometime in the early 1980s, goes the popular lore, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping looked out across the vast people’s communes and pronounced, “To get rich is glorious.”
Suddenly, without hesitation, the people put down their rakes, walked off the farm production teams, and entered the factory. Implausibly one billion people came together and focused like a laser on one single task…making stuff. Within a generation every corner of the globe was flooded with a tsunami of plastic doodads marked Made in China.
After decades of self-sabotage, people were finally getting ahead. Some bought refrigerators. Others ate red meat. The future was glorious. Everyone just knew it.
Yet when the Chinese weren’t making stuff to ship overseas, they were making skyscrapers – and brand new cities – regardless of if people would occupy them. By the start of the second decade of the second millennium the property boom had turned to an epic property bubble. According to one analyst, China is “building somewhere between 12 and 24 new cities every year.” Continue reading
