BEIJING, March 15 (Xinhuanet) --Urbanization represents a 'huge engine' for the country in sustaining economic expansion and driving aspirations to be a middle-income nation. But, along the way, the mechanism failed for some, with some newly built high-rises or even entire districts standing empty.
This job is a change for Mr Jia Baoyu. When he first arrived in Kangbashi of Erdos, he took on the role as a construction worker. The city witnessed a construction boom from 2004 to 2009. Over 50 office buildings, schools and shopping malls mushroomed from the ground of the once uninhabited desert.
Now this is one of the very few jobs still available to him, cleaning up of what is left in town.
"I was fired from the construction site, because they no longer had money to sustain our wages. Quite a few building projects have been halted or even abandoned since then," Jia said.
The sheer scale of the emptiness is testament to what a bursting housing bubble can look like.But the story had a prosperous start over a decade ago, when a coal rush began in Inner Mongolia.
Local farmers sold their land to the miners, and became instantly rich.
Encouraged by the boom, the local government also placed it big bets.
It invested 5.5 billion RMB, or around 900 million US dollars, to build a huge new town. That was meant to be housing for over a million residents.
Now the town waits in vain for traffic that will never arrive.
"So their idea is, if we build it, they will come. And this is what happens. There is this idea that if we get the government to give us the policies to build, if we can get the industries to come in, then we can get the policies to bring people in. The difficult part is you have to bring all these three parts in to create a complete economic engine," I-MCF President Einar Tangen said.
Over the past few decades, China's urbanization, billed as the greatest in human history, has been driven by government-led investment.
Most of them were successful. As the economy roared, authorities wielded increasingly capital to more ambitious city planning.
But in Kangbashi, this huge engine came to a standstill with the unexpected slump in coal prices.
Apartments were built, but people never came. Mr. Wen Qingliang was one of the very few residents we have met on road. He's reluctant to comment on the emptiness, and says that the government is still working to bring more people in.
"Recently, we had several new schools that started classes in the city. Hopefully, that will bring more families to settle down here," Wen said.
Meanwhile for Mr. Jia, he has chosen to stay because he still has hope that the city’s growth will pick up again. And that maybe one day he can transition from a migrant worker to an urbanite.
China's urbanization of unprecedented speed and scale is still underway, despite the existance of a few so-called ghost towns like this. But the country has learned a lesson, and is struggling to find the right pattern of its development. After all, urbanization is not just about building spectacular high-rises, but also about building decent lives for people living in them.
(Source: english.CNTV.cn)
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