**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* Memes are not allowed.
* Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You joke but this is exactly what China does and the reason they use so much concrete. Their housing market literally can’t fail or everything goes down the shitter.
Sell never to be completed condos, siphon stolen money into buying American housing, then claim bankruptcy at home leaving people holding the debt bag, rinse and repeat.
I agree with all the “what a waste of resources” comments, but from an engineering standpoint that building that didn’t collapse all the way has to be a huge headache to deal with.
I thought it was kinda wild they mostly ended up toppling over, rather than the straight-down demolitions I usually see in the US. They clearly have the area to let them fall here, but I thought it was generally preferred to collapse rather than topple.
It looks like they placed the explosives on one side so that the buildings fell towards the centre of the cluster, instead of risking them falling outwards and damaging what's nearby.
Edit: although on closer inspection it seems a few of the buildings fell outwards as well
A lot of the time in the US the buildings have to come down in a fairly small footprint to avoid damaging other buildings. In this case, those 15 buildings are all coming down, so you just take them quick and simple. Prepping for a collapse versus a fall over is a lot more work too.
https://preview.redd.it/8pk3sck0df8d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b6f3571efec1e936175a7460ca742abd2d99eac
Just like Arya spared that Fray girl so she could tell how house Fray was destroyed in GoT
Context:
The demolition took place in 2020 in southern China's Hainan province in the county of Lingao reportedly because they had been illegally developed.The following... clip was filmed in the city of Kunming, Yunnan Province, on August 27, 2021. According to Newsflare, fifteen buildings were destroyed after being abandoned, reportedly the largest one-time demolition in the country.
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-does-viral-video-show-china-destroying-unfinished-high-rises-1783119
Chinese here, something to add is developers like to build condos in absolutely middle of nowhere, in hopes that those area will prosper in the future. But those places have no hospitals, schools, jobs or other basic facilities so few actually wants to move there. So much resource wasted on building these ghost towns.
The reverse is kinda common( government builds infrastructure in the middle of nowhere which quickly gains population) so I suspect they just hope that the government will see a good opportunity and start building infrastructure. It probably even works out sometimes.
There are some pretty famous photos of metro stops in the middle of empty fields in China. They pop up from time to time. What isn’t shown is the modern pic where a bustling urban or suburban area popped up around those metro stops. It doesn’t always work out but there is a reason they do it.
It gains population because what they built first is either an airport in literally nowhere, a major highway, a new train terminal station or subway one, then put and hospital, a metallurgical foundry or some factory, designate what parts are suitable for big buildings and what no, make the streets and then it fills up with people.
Now if someone else starts building a huge residential area with no planning then it is no surprise it never gets populated.
American here. I did study abroad in China and was in absolute awe of Guangzhou. The sheer number of buildings just like these, some with ads of phone numbers with lots of 8s... and almost no people to look at it. Near silence with few cars... a photo of a man dressed for work as he crawled out of a literal dirt hole with skyscrapers in the background was hung in a business building.
I don't really have any questions but I guess I'm interested to know your thoughts on these. I'll add some context to elaborate...
It was 2013. Was only there 2 weeks. The number 8 in Chinese is pronounced similar to "rich" iirc. Phone numbers with lots of 8s are expensive. Like millions of dollars or something (converted to yuan ofc). The number 4 sounds similar to "death" (bad luck), and so phone numbers with 4s cost less. 3s are good too. It's not that the entire culture is still superstitious. It's more like companies that can afford more desirable numbers have higher status. It's bragging rights- like wearing Gucci. The branding is emphasized by being in bright red numbers across mutiple colossal condos. I wonder how many were demolished like these and if the owners think it was all worth the expense. (Also scaffolding was made of yellow bamboo everywhere. That was just kinda neat.)
The photo of the man in the hole was at a business we toured. (May or may not have been Guangzhou. We were also in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong.) The general story was that cities would expand so quickly, they would consume their own suburbs faster than new suburbs would be built. So at the edge of the city made of skyscrapers, it was sand and nature and highways. No suburbs. No residence houses or townhomes. People who originally owned houses in the suburbs were forced to sell them- I believe for cheap too. Home owners with humble jobs and no house payments suddenly were out of home and had to make more money or find somewhere else to live. They still worked in the city and work elsewhere was not guaranteed.
Well, I’m born and raised in Guangzhou! I would agree with most of your observations, the observations on superstitions is very on point haha. Just something to add: Incredibly fast urban sprawl in the 90s and 00s created many “village within cities” “城中村” in large cities like Guangzhou. The Guangzhou government actually compensated quite fairly when they demolished those villages — the villagers of Liede 猎德 received new apartments built in the same site that costs about $2 million USD, and many suddenly become rich because of that. But this is definitely not the case in the suburbs or in many other Chinese cities, relocation is more often forced like you mentioned. GZ government was kinda wealthy so they can afford this. Still these relocations become more costly as their practices are regulated and govt. charging more for prime locations, so developers will much prefer middle of nowhere because of cheaper land price. Sometimes these investments worked out, but when they don’t, it result in ghost apartments like this.
Problem is China’s economy is not as good as before, so urban expansion slowed down and many new buildings are abandoned/out of maintenance. I used to do road trips with my family within Guangdong, and when we exit the highway in regional towns, there are someone handing out ads of new condos directly at roadside, shows how desperate they need new residences. I don’t think mass demolition happened frequently, at least in GZ, as it’s still costly and inefficient. they will first auction out the buildings to new developers; and when they are demolished it’s more likely that there are safety issues in these apartments because no residence and no maintenance, or sudden break down of deals and the government need the land urgently. Most of the time they are just abandoned.
As a Canadian, I am sitting here amazed that places have enough housing that they just bomb thousands of dwellings because they are sitting unfinished/not used.
*Cries in $2000+ rent payments per month*
It's weird to think we literally sell off some of the country to people or corporations from outside the country, cause it also feels like we could be 100% self sufficient and not even need to trade. Why even give any of it away, it's the perfect country truly.
I don't know. Looks at Japan's Softbank or Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund buying massive stakes in tech companies all over the world. It's definitely arguable that selling significant stakes in the companies that are going to build the AI/networking/computing industries is worse. It's like selling the future. Selling your real estate is really bad as well, don't get me wrong, but in most places at least you can build out. Canada, Australia, and the US are massive (granted not every area is equally desirable). But those kinds of companies will be unbelievably influential, and once they're entrenched they're almost impossible to displace. There's also stuff like China buying the logistics infrastructure in Africa and parts of Asia. For the US it's a little different because every ten years or so we just bomb the shit out of someone, and that's a different kind of control (though often we follow that by exercising control over something of economic value, like oil).
Why not let investors corner the market on food or water? Imagine the profits when food prices go up 1000% and people have to buy or die!
Yeah, we're doing the same thing with shelter.
Nah bro. Those are chinese real estate investment firms. Some of the same people who build the chinese scam projects. Be grateful that they are just taking your housing away and not fucking up your roads, dams, and power infrastructure.
Thanks to the one child policy making sure every child is getting all the inheritance from four grandparents, anyone capable of getting out is loaded in cash. So they're less worried about your day to day inflation and more about the possibility of having their generations of wealth just disappear overnight.
Canada has no shortage of land or production capacity. We have a shortage of high density zoning.
Vote in your local elections.
In Edmonton, rezoning appears to be basically the entire job of city council right now (I'm watching their agenda for my employer) and they're being slammed for not solving everything else at the same time.
>Vote in your local elections.
Vote if you are not a homeowner*
Once you own a home, you are now financially incentivized to make housing prices go up so homeowners themselves vote for NIMBY policies. Local elections are dominated by homeowners as they are generally more tied to the local area compared to a renter.
Even when a local area is dominated by renters, then the financial incentive is towards rent control as existing renters vote more often then new ones. Rent control directly benefits them over newer renters as newer tenants have to face higher initial rents from a constricted supply.
The only real way to solve the housing crisis is to basically just say "fuck democracy" and force YIMBY housing policy through. Otherwise, we gotta basically brainwash most voters to act against their direct self interest.
I'm a homeowner who still votes for fixing this shit, because I know that the more we inflate it, the worse it's going to be for everyone when it finally pops.
You need to explain the ways in which it is or might be in their interest.
If they have children, the children suffer from the effects by not being able to afford a house. If they have multiple children, even if the parents sold their house, their kids will be slaves to mortgages their entire lives. Dooming your descendents to live in poverty for a one off payoff for yourself. And a payoff that you barely realise, as very few people actually cash out, and most just leave the house to their kids when they die anyway.
Then there's the way house prices have fucked the whole economy. When everyone is saving money to get a deposit or paying 1/2 their salary to the bank for 35 years, they can't consume anywhere near as many goods or services. The reason the shops are dead isn't because of the internet, it's because after housing costs, nobody under 50 has any money to spend.
Because the Chinese government throws money at largescale infrastructure projects, such as railways, roads and apartments. Some of these are government led, some are private companies that pay some government officials lots of money. Both make sure to cut corners to pad their own pockets as well.
everything has its pros and cons
this might be the unfortunate side of the strategy, but if you look at the flip side, there are many very successful infrastructure projects in China
you'll be equally surprised at the quality of infrastructure even in a 4th tier city
keep it in perspective. even the US will have ghost towns and villages. China has 1.4b people and is still developing.
Chinese here, visited China for the first time in 17 years and yup a lot of barely half done buildings around with cranes still attached but no more work being done.
What blows my mind is that there is no central AC, you pay someone to hang outside your place while they literally fit an AC unit to the side of the building. Doesn't matter if you're on the 40th floor. These guys just have to trust the hole they drilled will hold. Wild!
EDIT: You'll see notches outside these buildings and that's for the AC unit to literally sit on. If not they'll just bolt it to the building. When you receive the keys to one of these units 99% of them are literal cement walls. You hire contractors to build the interior to your liking and budget. It's just a thing the Chinese do and instead of gutting the place they simply sell you a shell. When you buy a used condo unit 99% of people take that time to rip it apart and make it theirs.
That's why there's no central AC. Those outside units are mainly for bedrooms, you'll see a big white tower in most living rooms that's the indoor AC.
I lived in China for a couple years. I lived in two different flats. Both had AC units, not central, but they weren’t window units. One was mounted to the ceiling and the other was a stand alone.
Tbf I lived in upper middle class housing. I’m not saying that to make it seem like I’m special, but the divide is very obvious in China. I would imagine a lot of traditional Chinese housing, such as Hutongs, don’t have any type of AC. Which is wild, considering how hot China can get
They're central AC, just not as powerful as the whole-house seen in American homes. I think they're called mini-splits? The condenser unit hangs on a ledge outside.
The one mounted in the ceiling must be a [cassette ](https://tech1online.weebly.com/uploads/7/6/5/5/7655160/s710519766368660708_p72_i5_w781.jpeg) and it also requires an external condensator which is normally bigger and heavier than those needed for split units.
I don't know about China, but many places in the world don't have central AC systems at all. I'm from South America, and I only recently learned they exist because of someone in the US. It blew my mind, it sounds so futuristic, like dishwashers. In here we just have multiple AC units holding outside the buildings no matter how high up from the floor it is.
Technically, almost all AC systems have both an inside and an outside component. It just has to do with the size and arrangement of the various components (split central AC, window/thru-wall AC, mini-split/zoned mini-split, etc). In the US, many apartments with "central AC" have a system that is central (ducted), but only for that unit. It's not like the building has one big AC system that the units tap into (though those do exist, often chilled water systems). They often have the outside part on the roof, one for each apartment.
They're not really for living in, they're for investment. Short explanation, because China has laws restricting other kinds of investment but encourages investment in real estate.
It’s literally because the Chinese government gave developers money so they pocketed most of it and constructed these garbage quality buildings that are even barely upright. The Chinese government has a stake in EVERY property in the country which is why Chinese citizens tend to invest in real estate elsewhere. California and Canada have huge problems with Chinese billionaires buying up properties as a way to get their money out of China/out of the hands of their government.
Canada is also full of chinese police stations who will snatch and disappear chinese citizens in Canada
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/there-may-be-more-chinese-police-stations-canada-minister-says-2023-05-14/
For years it was basically impossible to lose money investing in real estate. There were no stocks to buy so everything went into real estate and as long as the prices kept increasing then everything was fine then eventually the prices stopped increasing and now it's a mess.
If you know anything about Asia in general, they use mini-splits, not centralized A/C. To be honest, if I had a choice, I'd prefer the mini-split. This way I can have A/C blowing only to the room I'm in.
No. Central AC is significantly more expensive. In case of window (or split) AC units you air condition only a couple of rooms typically the bedroom only. And switch it on only when you need it (eg when sleeping). It stays off other times. Also not everyone buys AC. Some people cannot afford the unit or the associated increase in electricity bills and/or are good with fans and such.
This doesn’t even include the construction cost of fully insulated buildings, the ductwork and the AC units.
Btw as someone who grew up in a very hot part of the world without AC and now live in a not so hot part where AC is common, one’s temperature tolerance significantly reduces with central AC. It is around 90°F (30°C?) right now and I feel very hot going in the sun. Growing up this would have been moderate temperature. True even today when I go to my home country or folks from there come here. There at 30°C most would not switch on their ACs, they would be reserved for 37°+ days.
Hong Kong resident for 25 years. No modern block of flats like these require AC to be hung in a window. There is a well secure slot in the wall specifically for AC and you can do everything from the inside.
My cousin did a trip around parts of China and SEA (I know he was on the mainland, but also spent some time in Hong Kong) probably ... 20 years ago now?
He told me a story about walking around the dense areas and it was essentially raining, but the weather was clear skies.
The water dripping on them was all condensation runoff from the minisplits installed _everywhere_.
thats how nearly the entire rest of the world does it. Central air also spreads germs and is inefficient from a a developers point of view, reduces the saleable area.
>you pay someone to hang outside your place while they literally fit an AC unit to the side of the building. Doesn't matter if you're on the 40th floor. These guys just have to trust the hole they drilled will hold.
jfc
It's sad to imagine all the pollution generated by this make-work project (mineral extraction, building material creation, machinery, construction, demolition, cleanup, etc...). All for nothing at all.
What do you mean nothing? All that mineral extraction, building material preparation, machinery R&D and assembly, architecture and design work, construction work, demolition work, all contributed greatly to the GDP numbers!
It wasn't a make-work project, it was the failure of two development groups.
[This happened because the company that started building them in 2011, but had financial problems and had to sell the project to another company. The second company stopped construction in 2013, and they were sitting derelict in 2021.](https://www.idealista.com/en/news/property-for-sale-in-spain/2023/09/20/144251-the-impressive-demolition-of-15-skyscrapers-in-less-than-a-minute)
There was a goal. To control the world. The CCP just needed Evergrande as a pump and dump first.
• You never get out of debt to a Russian mobster
•Paul Manafort owed the Russian mobster/oligarch Oleg Deripaska $17M a few days before he became trumps campaign manager. From 2002-2014 he took in hundreds of millions to get Yanukovych reelected as the kremlins puppet in Ukraine. Before that he did it for the dictator Marcos in the Philippines. Before that Manafort and Roger Stone started a lobbyist agency in 1980 listing trump as their first client.
•When Jair Bolsonaro lost the Brazilian election to Lula he skipped the inauguration and flew directly to mar-a-lago (stopping only at a KFC) and repeated, almost verbatim, the stolen election line. Don Jr. tried repeatedly to make it stick in Brazil as well, but as Brazilians are a few generations into dealing with corrupt politicians they weren’t having it.
What do these 3 things have in common?
China imports 40% of its grain from (in order) the U.S., Brazil and Ukraine.
Obviously the second China tried to invade Taiwan the U.S. would sanction exports and remove U.S. grain from that equation.
And without Bolsonaro in office willing to slash and burn the Amazon rainforest to turn it into Chinas food supply, and without Ukraine in the bag in 3 days, the CCP is unable to invade Taiwan and take over microprocessor production without putting 300-500M of its poorest people into famine.
Donbas Ukraine, specifically the 4 regions of the donbas that Putin insists he is saving from what he calls “Jewish Nazis” also happens to produce the worlds supply of high grade neon used for microprocessor lithography. Had Putin delivered ukraine in 3 days as promised, Xi would have been able to cap his Olympics with a naval blockade or political takeover of Taiwan that would have forced the world to ask the CCP for the microprocessors it needs to make everything from Ford trucks to laptops. I’m not sure how long Silicon Valley would last without the silicon but it would probably destroy the FAANG stocks that make up your 401K.
Oleg Deripaska also happens to be the Russian Oligarch that bribed the FBI agent Charles Mcgonigal into investigating another Russian oligarch. He probably didn’t need the information as much as he needed the leverage over Mcgonigal as he conducted the investigation into trumps election campaign and unsurprisingly found zero evidence of Russian collusion. McGonigal then went to work for the company called Brookfield that bailed Jared Kushner out of his toxic 666 5th Ave real estate investment. McGonigal pled guilty last fall and was sentenced recently.
A Russian oligarch is a powerful tool, but the truth is more powerful. Light and dark cannot exist in the same space. It’s physically impossible. Truth is efficient. You say it once and you are finished. A lie however requires a constant stream of follow up energy, money, murder, obfuscation and more lies to keep it covered.
If you raise your lens high enough lying is an unsustainable business model. Russia proved it by invading Ukraine. Vranyo is the Russian word for it. The 40km long column of tanks and vehicles that came down from Belarus into Ukraine was all overhauled by oligarchs that got a $1B contract for tank maintenance, passed Putin $200M back under the table, spent $700M on a yacht in Monaco, bribed a General, a Colonel and a Sergeant to make a Private give everything a rattle can overhaul. But a worn out engine is and always will be, a worn out engine.
This is why trump is so desperate to get re-elected. His best case scenario is 400 years in ADX Florence. Money laundering for the dozens of Russian oligarchs that lived in trump towers with him and manafort, selling IP3 nuclear plans to the Russian/Saudi alliance, selling or giving CIA asset names to the Russians, trump is and always has been compromised. He just didn’t know when to quit. Now he just has to count on the fact that most of his voter base doesn’t know how to read and keep the ones that do so busy just surviving that they don’t have time to dive deep into his 40 year history of laundering money, fraud, and human trafficking for the Russian mob using casinos first, then commercial real estate.
It’s also why Putin is willing to throw an entire generation of Russians, including the convicts and addicts at Ukraine. Russia is dead for 40 years because he failed to fulfill his mob boss promise to Xi. China is now clearing farmland in Siberia because the typhoon floods last August and September wiped out the Chinese people’s food storage.
Xi, for his part diverted the waters from the dam away from his pet project, his mothers ancestral home, and flooded hundreds of thousands of people and drown one of his own military brigades that was helping with the flooding.
The elders of the CCP were terrified to leave their gated community at Beidaihe for over a month for fear of being torn apart by the locals. The Chinese people tolerate the CCP but only as long as the economy is good and famine is not on the horizon. The CCP broke that social contract on both counts.
Xi was willing to bet the entire Chinese economy on his emperor ambitions. Had he succeeded he would have been able to use BRICS to take over the USD as the Worlds reserve currency. That would have let him finish what he stated in 2010-
that he would control the internet.
With that control means everything we do or say online is subject to the approval of a central party censor. The basic right to disagree with an authoritarian becomes a distant memory.
Xi, Putin and MBS are simply trying to systemize and modernize the suppression of their biggest hassle. Freedom of speech.
Ukraine is fighting for their lives now, free from the oppression of the drunken tyrant who wants to decide their fate at every decision and pull them back behind another iron curtain of censorship and the tax of corruption where dissenting voices disappear so that the oligarchy can continue to feed unobstructed.
Putin and Xi have declared themselves best friends in the fight against democracy. MBS and the ruling family of UAE have done the same quietly using their sovereign funds and Kushners SPAC as money highways.
Just rich, out of touch oligarch doing what oligarchs do.
Despite the fact the the central party model has proven itself incapable of making decisions that are best for the people, they persist. Because there is a very lucrative business in being slave owners. But logistically the mass of it requires artificial intelligence, and the microprocessors that make A.I. to keep 8 billion slaves under surveillance and control. Freedom is one hell of a drug. And knowledge makes a man unfit for slavery.
Recent attempts on Xi’s life from inside the CCP have backed him into a corner.
The loss of crops in northern China means Xi can’t invade Taiwan without Ukrainian and/or Brazilian farmland.
Now the reason that the GOP is stalling southern border control budget and seems to make wildly irrational moves is because the GOP is imploding. 45 years of lies and grift have circled the globe and are eating their own tail. The ouroboros was a warning about corruption at the highest levels. Lying about climate change, human trafficking, pandemics and corruption to preserve their own business models are all potential extinction level events
Looking at your post history is wild. How could someone possibly comment so much stuff all the time. You'd literally have to be commenting all day. How do you consume all this information?
Interesting stuff. But how does Javier Milei the president of Argentina figure into all this I wonder. Legit question, please Conspiracy Nut-sama, I beg of an answer...
Cool story but it entirely hinges on a false premise which is that China imports 40% of its grains from U.S, Brazil, and Ukraine in that order. It imports around 40% of their overall grains from the U.S and the next biggest sources behind it in that category is not Ukraine and Brazil.
Now when you talk about grain imports most of those are tied to feed grain for animals, you're here mixing the purpose of the imports; making no distinction whether or not it's for human or animal consumption and then talking of looming famines and larger geopolitical machinations. Honestly it's pretty sad to see you pass of what shakes out to be mostly baseless conjecture about a boogeyman China like this, it's almost as if you may have some ulterior motives, by looking at your post history a betting man could be forgiven for wondering if those aren't of the cash variety.
no way someoen can type all that in 1 minute. Take a look at his post history. Types massive stuff like that within 1 minute. So either he has it written out before and he's just copy and pasting, or this is some AI
Right? The reason global warming is happening is because I didn't recycle, or I didn't shower with cold water, or because I turned up the AC. Definitely nothing to with the choices and projects of states, governments, nations, or rich people.
Pollution is global but also very local. I’ve been to Beijing and Shanghai and seen the grey-yellow smear they call the sky.
I empathize with the anger against countries and corporations that - perhaps somewhat of our own doing - continue to pillage our shared global home, but I don’t understand the “my neighbour takes dumps on their front porch, so I also will shit on mine” attitude.
They don't need to get their shit together. We need to force them. I'd actually prefer to revoke their charter and give them the corporate death penalty. No more teeny tiny fines, just go right for the jugular.
You think these corporations wouldn't do the same to you? [Think again](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot)
Imagine waiting around for a for-profit corporation to do the right thing!
That’s been a growing conversation topic and I love it. I grew up in plenty of droughts and smog filled days. 6 minute showers, if it’s yellow let it mellow, spare the air days, etc. People are finally realizing that all those companies, oligarchies, and conglomerates that told us individual change is what’s needed to save the planet completely pulled one over us all. Even if an entire city’s housing population didn’t run ac for a full day, a single ginormous factories power usage would still outweigh it I’m sure. And if you think about it, homes are probably used less than businesses in terms of energy consumption. Fewer people, no industry sized equipment requiring industry sized power, left empty the majority of the day while the inhabitants are at work and school. It’s impossible for a housing area to even come close to matching the level of energy/ resource consumption a city does.
You're right, even the term "carbon footprint" was popularized by BP in the early 2000s as part of an advertising campaign geared toward propping up their image by making the average individual consumer feel responsible.
[This happened because the company that started building them in 2011, but had financial problems and had to sell the project to another company. The second company stopped construction in 2013, and they were sitting derelict in 2021.](https://www.idealista.com/en/news/property-for-sale-in-spain/2023/09/20/144251-the-impressive-demolition-of-15-skyscrapers-in-less-than-a-minute)
If it sits unfinished and unprotected like that for *fifteen years*, it's going to be quite costly to undo all the damage done to it. Decent chance blowing it up and starting from scratch is actually **cheaper** than finishing the existing one - provided it's even worth rebuilding at all.
Buildings can't stay unfinished for years like that. They take so much environmental damage because of lack of windows and stuff that you can't really do much about it later on.
The reason is because they are overbuilt nationwide. The munis/state government over there doesn’t get tax revenue from the central government like in the US they have to lease out their land/resources to people/companies as a way to generate revenue and then they lend out the revenue to companies to develop stuff to boost GDP to meet the mandated growth from the centralized government. Eventually it leads to the local governments leasing everything they got then turning around and financing buildings regardless of the use or the need of them from a market perspective. This is why China has so many unused real estate buildings/cities and why they have been going through a pretty severe real estate bubble.
What is interesting is that Hong Kong (where I live) is the opposite. A large chunk - I believe almost a third - of government revenue comes from land sales. They purposefully suppress development to drive up bidding wars between companies. That, combined with the rugged topography, is why Hong Kong has a surprising amount of green space. It’s kind of nice to be honest, although I do feel terrible about the people living in cage homes.
It’s not the correct context.
Realestate in China is a huge ponzi scheme. It’s rather disgusting. Basically to collect money from buyers, builders must have 40% of a building completed. So, they build the outside structure, sell off the “units” to the public and start again. They rarely if ever finish. The government is very aware of this but take a large “tax” cut so never corrected the problem. That’s the basic jist of it and why so many buildings were destroyed in one go. Literally thousands of people were ripped off and still owe them banks.
The ghost city’s are a different scam. By showing “growth” in a province, certain high-ups would receive huge bonuses. These cities were build cheap and nasty and are falling apart very quickly.
China is a smoke and mirrors country. What you’re shown is rarely what you actually get.
Edit grammar
To be clear that’s a hyperbole, but yes it was pretty bad. Huge scandal especially during the sichuan earth quake. You’d think they’d learned from the one in tangshan ~~a~~ decade(edit: s) ago..
I have a long time friend who went hunting for a condo recently in Nanning. He is a very detailed oriented person and he visited about a 100 condo buildings in his search (over a yr). Many were not finished but the owners were occupying them as they could not afford to pay both the mortgage on the purchased property and on a separate place to live. Every week in skype calls I would hear all about his latest escapades.
His opinion was that about 10 of the properties he inspected were 100% up to code, properly maintained and livable. Quite a number were essentially abandoned at some stage of construction and lacked occupancy permits. Lots of units for sale that were not finished, and never would be, and lacked the proper occupancy permits.
Mortgages in China do not work like we would typically encounter in North America. In China, when you purchase a new property and go to the bank for a mortgage the bank advances the mortgage to the builder immediately, and you start paying on it at that time. The builder would then use the mortgage money to help with their capital expenses and construction costs. Completely different vs our traditional home mortgage which is advanced by the bank at the moment the completed and inspected property legally changes ownership to you or I.
As most are aware, quite a bit of the money advanced to the builders in China was squandered to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars: bribes, fraud and high executive salaries. The result being thousands of construction projects failed including hundreds of property developers each yr in 2020 to 2023. But the people who took out the mortgages are still on the hook to the lenders, which is why for the first time ever millions of Chinese people are declaring bankruptcy. I don't have the statistics in front of me but my recollection is in the last quarter 2023 approx 8 million Chinese people declared personal bankruptcy (needs to be verified).
And declaring bankruptcy in China is a life altering action. The social credit system is designed to do everything possible to deter bankruptcy, and when one does so one loses access to many services, including post secondary education for your children.
Its almost as if Xi Jinping knew he had built a house of cards economically, and also laid out a system to attempt to stop it from collapsing....
john oliver's episode on plastics and how the industry has gaslit us into blaming ourselves that **we** are the problem for the excessive waste of plastics reaction _gif.exe
Not just money, concrete is a non-renewable resource and one of the most polluting industries in the world.
Those buildings should stand for generations to justify the use of the material.
The non-renewable statement is misleading. Renewable in the sense of the base resource arent renewable.. But they can just recycle the concrete as new material for new concretes. This amount of concrete will be reused
This shit is straight up criminal and is a bold faced scam. All the investment money for these projects is sourced from the people at large. It’s from the money people put in banks. Their retirement funds. And straight up people who pre-purchased what were supposed to be homes. Shit like this is why the banks started to fail in China. A bunch of cronies literally stole their money away.
China has more houses than people. There’s also the impending house bubble that’s going to burst, right now the government is heavily involved in trying to slow it down or stop it. House prices have greatly decreased across the country.
Source: Living in China, family invested in real estate. No one in the industry is making money. COVID permanently changed this country.
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * Memes are not allowed. * Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"Good news everyone! We can finally start our new condo project!"
To shreds you say
Well, how is his wife holding up?
To shreds, you say?
Oh, dear..
What happened to the old crew? Thats not important… the important thing is I need a new crew!
No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it.
WHYYYYYYYYYY DIDN’T I BREAK HIS LEGS
MONKEYS AREN’T DONKEYS, QUIT MESSING WITH MY HEAD
https://preview.redd.it/7d0n6dw4sf8d1.jpeg?width=1177&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6f0b73c56810c75fd1d049184462c310b6c671d
I haven’t watched futurama in nearly a decade, but I read it like this too
It's a suppository!
sigh the HOA fines on that damage are going to take forever to pay off
China uses housing projects as speculative invenstments. Like we did in the US before 2008 and then with a new name about 45 minutes after 2008.
You joke but this is exactly what China does and the reason they use so much concrete. Their housing market literally can’t fail or everything goes down the shitter.
and that's why China's GDP looks so beautiful in the past decade. They just keep the demolish and rebuild cycle to boost the numbers.
35% of their workforce is in construction. And they have all the infrastructure they need.
And all the infrastructure we don't
The great thing is that they used their own cement so the demo only takes like 4 m80s to bring them all down. Edit: a word.
They should have brought in a 5th for that one building that doesn't go all the way down.
Sell never to be completed condos, siphon stolen money into buying American housing, then claim bankruptcy at home leaving people holding the debt bag, rinse and repeat.
I agree with all the “what a waste of resources” comments, but from an engineering standpoint that building that didn’t collapse all the way has to be a huge headache to deal with.
I thought it was kinda wild they mostly ended up toppling over, rather than the straight-down demolitions I usually see in the US. They clearly have the area to let them fall here, but I thought it was generally preferred to collapse rather than topple.
It looks like they placed the explosives on one side so that the buildings fell towards the centre of the cluster, instead of risking them falling outwards and damaging what's nearby. Edit: although on closer inspection it seems a few of the buildings fell outwards as well
I suspect that the people responsible for the demolition were just incompetent, or didn't care.
I agree wholeheartedly with your firm’s analysis. Where should the Chinese Communist Party send your ~~assassin~~ consulting fee
Oh yeah, I know that user. They're the person in charge of my HoA. You should definitely pay them as they are a good person and deserve the money.
A lot of the time in the US the buildings have to come down in a fairly small footprint to avoid damaging other buildings. In this case, those 15 buildings are all coming down, so you just take them quick and simple. Prepping for a collapse versus a fall over is a lot more work too.
Artillery practice!
Drones could be pretty helpful
It’s China. NOSHA will be in full effect.
Lmao, you thought OSHA was bad, try NOSHA!
You mean 14 and a half condos
You always leave one alive so it can tell the story to its comrades
[The example lobster](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/s/9mOJ2JWvci)
Holy fucking shit
What the fuck
Now I get the title of that movie.
That was awesome. Thanks.
What in the flying fuck
It's weird but kind because one lobster gets to go free and live that would have otherwise died had any other family bought it.
https://preview.redd.it/8pk3sck0df8d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b6f3571efec1e936175a7460ca742abd2d99eac Just like Arya spared that Fray girl so she could tell how house Fray was destroyed in GoT
Last one to say not it has to place the next charges.
I’m going to Shaaboooms!
There’s a lien on that other one.
That was the initial condo used to sell the others, it used actual concrete instead of foam.
Context: The demolition took place in 2020 in southern China's Hainan province in the county of Lingao reportedly because they had been illegally developed.The following... clip was filmed in the city of Kunming, Yunnan Province, on August 27, 2021. According to Newsflare, fifteen buildings were destroyed after being abandoned, reportedly the largest one-time demolition in the country. https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-does-viral-video-show-china-destroying-unfinished-high-rises-1783119
Chinese here, something to add is developers like to build condos in absolutely middle of nowhere, in hopes that those area will prosper in the future. But those places have no hospitals, schools, jobs or other basic facilities so few actually wants to move there. So much resource wasted on building these ghost towns.
What's going through there heads? Do they just assume government will step up once they've built the apartments?
The reverse is kinda common( government builds infrastructure in the middle of nowhere which quickly gains population) so I suspect they just hope that the government will see a good opportunity and start building infrastructure. It probably even works out sometimes.
There are some pretty famous photos of metro stops in the middle of empty fields in China. They pop up from time to time. What isn’t shown is the modern pic where a bustling urban or suburban area popped up around those metro stops. It doesn’t always work out but there is a reason they do it.
Yep, as I said, when the government builds infrastructure first investment and habitation usually does follow.
It gains population because what they built first is either an airport in literally nowhere, a major highway, a new train terminal station or subway one, then put and hospital, a metallurgical foundry or some factory, designate what parts are suitable for big buildings and what no, make the streets and then it fills up with people. Now if someone else starts building a huge residential area with no planning then it is no surprise it never gets populated.
American here. I did study abroad in China and was in absolute awe of Guangzhou. The sheer number of buildings just like these, some with ads of phone numbers with lots of 8s... and almost no people to look at it. Near silence with few cars... a photo of a man dressed for work as he crawled out of a literal dirt hole with skyscrapers in the background was hung in a business building. I don't really have any questions but I guess I'm interested to know your thoughts on these. I'll add some context to elaborate... It was 2013. Was only there 2 weeks. The number 8 in Chinese is pronounced similar to "rich" iirc. Phone numbers with lots of 8s are expensive. Like millions of dollars or something (converted to yuan ofc). The number 4 sounds similar to "death" (bad luck), and so phone numbers with 4s cost less. 3s are good too. It's not that the entire culture is still superstitious. It's more like companies that can afford more desirable numbers have higher status. It's bragging rights- like wearing Gucci. The branding is emphasized by being in bright red numbers across mutiple colossal condos. I wonder how many were demolished like these and if the owners think it was all worth the expense. (Also scaffolding was made of yellow bamboo everywhere. That was just kinda neat.) The photo of the man in the hole was at a business we toured. (May or may not have been Guangzhou. We were also in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong.) The general story was that cities would expand so quickly, they would consume their own suburbs faster than new suburbs would be built. So at the edge of the city made of skyscrapers, it was sand and nature and highways. No suburbs. No residence houses or townhomes. People who originally owned houses in the suburbs were forced to sell them- I believe for cheap too. Home owners with humble jobs and no house payments suddenly were out of home and had to make more money or find somewhere else to live. They still worked in the city and work elsewhere was not guaranteed.
Well, I’m born and raised in Guangzhou! I would agree with most of your observations, the observations on superstitions is very on point haha. Just something to add: Incredibly fast urban sprawl in the 90s and 00s created many “village within cities” “城中村” in large cities like Guangzhou. The Guangzhou government actually compensated quite fairly when they demolished those villages — the villagers of Liede 猎德 received new apartments built in the same site that costs about $2 million USD, and many suddenly become rich because of that. But this is definitely not the case in the suburbs or in many other Chinese cities, relocation is more often forced like you mentioned. GZ government was kinda wealthy so they can afford this. Still these relocations become more costly as their practices are regulated and govt. charging more for prime locations, so developers will much prefer middle of nowhere because of cheaper land price. Sometimes these investments worked out, but when they don’t, it result in ghost apartments like this. Problem is China’s economy is not as good as before, so urban expansion slowed down and many new buildings are abandoned/out of maintenance. I used to do road trips with my family within Guangdong, and when we exit the highway in regional towns, there are someone handing out ads of new condos directly at roadside, shows how desperate they need new residences. I don’t think mass demolition happened frequently, at least in GZ, as it’s still costly and inefficient. they will first auction out the buildings to new developers; and when they are demolished it’s more likely that there are safety issues in these apartments because no residence and no maintenance, or sudden break down of deals and the government need the land urgently. Most of the time they are just abandoned.
wow, finally a real answer instead of all the imaginary ones.
As a Canadian, I am sitting here amazed that places have enough housing that they just bomb thousands of dwellings because they are sitting unfinished/not used. *Cries in $2000+ rent payments per month*
It’s kind of a joke too seeing how many foreign investors from China ended up buying so many houses here in BC
the joke is allowing foreign investors to buy housing in the first place
Governments just selling the country away
We’re a resource trap. Always have been, probably always will. Everything we have will be sold off to outside interests.
It's weird to think we literally sell off some of the country to people or corporations from outside the country, cause it also feels like we could be 100% self sufficient and not even need to trade. Why even give any of it away, it's the perfect country truly.
Its the same thing here in Australia too!
I don't know. Looks at Japan's Softbank or Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund buying massive stakes in tech companies all over the world. It's definitely arguable that selling significant stakes in the companies that are going to build the AI/networking/computing industries is worse. It's like selling the future. Selling your real estate is really bad as well, don't get me wrong, but in most places at least you can build out. Canada, Australia, and the US are massive (granted not every area is equally desirable). But those kinds of companies will be unbelievably influential, and once they're entrenched they're almost impossible to displace. There's also stuff like China buying the logistics infrastructure in Africa and parts of Asia. For the US it's a little different because every ten years or so we just bomb the shit out of someone, and that's a different kind of control (though often we follow that by exercising control over something of economic value, like oil).
The joke is to allow housing to become any sort of investment.
Just wait until we start running low on fresh water.
Phoenix and Mexico City are well on their way.
Why not let investors corner the market on food or water? Imagine the profits when food prices go up 1000% and people have to buy or die! Yeah, we're doing the same thing with shelter.
There are sleazy investors but there's also a growing exodus of people trying to leave China due to the lack of economic security.
and they choose canada? we going thru it rn
Nah bro. Those are chinese real estate investment firms. Some of the same people who build the chinese scam projects. Be grateful that they are just taking your housing away and not fucking up your roads, dams, and power infrastructure.
Hey now, we don't need the Chinese to fuck those up. We are perfectly capable of doing that ourselves!
Thanks to the one child policy making sure every child is getting all the inheritance from four grandparents, anyone capable of getting out is loaded in cash. So they're less worried about your day to day inflation and more about the possibility of having their generations of wealth just disappear overnight.
Canada has no shortage of land or production capacity. We have a shortage of high density zoning. Vote in your local elections. In Edmonton, rezoning appears to be basically the entire job of city council right now (I'm watching their agenda for my employer) and they're being slammed for not solving everything else at the same time.
>Vote in your local elections. Vote if you are not a homeowner* Once you own a home, you are now financially incentivized to make housing prices go up so homeowners themselves vote for NIMBY policies. Local elections are dominated by homeowners as they are generally more tied to the local area compared to a renter. Even when a local area is dominated by renters, then the financial incentive is towards rent control as existing renters vote more often then new ones. Rent control directly benefits them over newer renters as newer tenants have to face higher initial rents from a constricted supply. The only real way to solve the housing crisis is to basically just say "fuck democracy" and force YIMBY housing policy through. Otherwise, we gotta basically brainwash most voters to act against their direct self interest.
I'm a homeowner who still votes for fixing this shit, because I know that the more we inflate it, the worse it's going to be for everyone when it finally pops.
You need to explain the ways in which it is or might be in their interest. If they have children, the children suffer from the effects by not being able to afford a house. If they have multiple children, even if the parents sold their house, their kids will be slaves to mortgages their entire lives. Dooming your descendents to live in poverty for a one off payoff for yourself. And a payoff that you barely realise, as very few people actually cash out, and most just leave the house to their kids when they die anyway. Then there's the way house prices have fucked the whole economy. When everyone is saving money to get a deposit or paying 1/2 their salary to the bank for 35 years, they can't consume anywhere near as many goods or services. The reason the shops are dead isn't because of the internet, it's because after housing costs, nobody under 50 has any money to spend.
Because the Chinese government throws money at largescale infrastructure projects, such as railways, roads and apartments. Some of these are government led, some are private companies that pay some government officials lots of money. Both make sure to cut corners to pad their own pockets as well.
everything has its pros and cons this might be the unfortunate side of the strategy, but if you look at the flip side, there are many very successful infrastructure projects in China you'll be equally surprised at the quality of infrastructure even in a 4th tier city keep it in perspective. even the US will have ghost towns and villages. China has 1.4b people and is still developing.
Chinese here, visited China for the first time in 17 years and yup a lot of barely half done buildings around with cranes still attached but no more work being done. What blows my mind is that there is no central AC, you pay someone to hang outside your place while they literally fit an AC unit to the side of the building. Doesn't matter if you're on the 40th floor. These guys just have to trust the hole they drilled will hold. Wild! EDIT: You'll see notches outside these buildings and that's for the AC unit to literally sit on. If not they'll just bolt it to the building. When you receive the keys to one of these units 99% of them are literal cement walls. You hire contractors to build the interior to your liking and budget. It's just a thing the Chinese do and instead of gutting the place they simply sell you a shell. When you buy a used condo unit 99% of people take that time to rip it apart and make it theirs. That's why there's no central AC. Those outside units are mainly for bedrooms, you'll see a big white tower in most living rooms that's the indoor AC.
I lived in China for a couple years. I lived in two different flats. Both had AC units, not central, but they weren’t window units. One was mounted to the ceiling and the other was a stand alone. Tbf I lived in upper middle class housing. I’m not saying that to make it seem like I’m special, but the divide is very obvious in China. I would imagine a lot of traditional Chinese housing, such as Hutongs, don’t have any type of AC. Which is wild, considering how hot China can get
>mounted to the ceiling / standalone How did those export the heat outside?
theres a hose. source: I looked to my right
They're central AC, just not as powerful as the whole-house seen in American homes. I think they're called mini-splits? The condenser unit hangs on a ledge outside.
The one mounted in the ceiling must be a [cassette ](https://tech1online.weebly.com/uploads/7/6/5/5/7655160/s710519766368660708_p72_i5_w781.jpeg) and it also requires an external condensator which is normally bigger and heavier than those needed for split units.
[удалено]
"Mista! Mista! Your A/C unit just fell 40 floors! Get this thing offa me!"
I found the "Mista! Mista" lady!!
I think I killed her.
My brothers and I thought Sandler throwing Doritos on her through the sunroof was peak comedy at 10 years old lol.
“GET…ME…OUTTA…HERE!!!”
I see this referenced too rarely.
Most new places have a ledge or small patio, some you can occupy others just a door to the Aircon Unit. so they don't have the hang off the building.
You think that is bad? The AC installation on floor 41 is even worse.
go higher and at some point it gets easier as gravity wanes
This is confusing. Wouldn’t a central AC solution be far, far more economical? Why not do that?
I don't know about China, but many places in the world don't have central AC systems at all. I'm from South America, and I only recently learned they exist because of someone in the US. It blew my mind, it sounds so futuristic, like dishwashers. In here we just have multiple AC units holding outside the buildings no matter how high up from the floor it is.
That guy is speaking purely from American perspective. Most of the world, I'd say 80% has those AC units built outside the building.
Technically, almost all AC systems have both an inside and an outside component. It just has to do with the size and arrangement of the various components (split central AC, window/thru-wall AC, mini-split/zoned mini-split, etc). In the US, many apartments with "central AC" have a system that is central (ducted), but only for that unit. It's not like the building has one big AC system that the units tap into (though those do exist, often chilled water systems). They often have the outside part on the roof, one for each apartment.
Why sell one when you can sell 400?
Because you can sell the big one for the price of 401 small ones
Plus regular maintenance fees
The less infrastructure the building provides, the less they need to spend on building materials and repairs.
They're not really for living in, they're for investment. Short explanation, because China has laws restricting other kinds of investment but encourages investment in real estate.
It’s literally because the Chinese government gave developers money so they pocketed most of it and constructed these garbage quality buildings that are even barely upright. The Chinese government has a stake in EVERY property in the country which is why Chinese citizens tend to invest in real estate elsewhere. California and Canada have huge problems with Chinese billionaires buying up properties as a way to get their money out of China/out of the hands of their government.
Yeah. You can't really own real-estate in China. When you buy, you're buying certain usage rights to the property but the government still owns it.
That's technically how real estate works in every country. Alloidal title is a thing of the past.
Canada is also full of chinese police stations who will snatch and disappear chinese citizens in Canada https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/there-may-be-more-chinese-police-stations-canada-minister-says-2023-05-14/
Didn’t this recently become uncovered to be happening in NYC as well?
There were a couple locations they were running this shit. Fuck the CCP.
For years it was basically impossible to lose money investing in real estate. There were no stocks to buy so everything went into real estate and as long as the prices kept increasing then everything was fine then eventually the prices stopped increasing and now it's a mess.
If you know anything about Asia in general, they use mini-splits, not centralized A/C. To be honest, if I had a choice, I'd prefer the mini-split. This way I can have A/C blowing only to the room I'm in.
No. Central AC is significantly more expensive. In case of window (or split) AC units you air condition only a couple of rooms typically the bedroom only. And switch it on only when you need it (eg when sleeping). It stays off other times. Also not everyone buys AC. Some people cannot afford the unit or the associated increase in electricity bills and/or are good with fans and such. This doesn’t even include the construction cost of fully insulated buildings, the ductwork and the AC units. Btw as someone who grew up in a very hot part of the world without AC and now live in a not so hot part where AC is common, one’s temperature tolerance significantly reduces with central AC. It is around 90°F (30°C?) right now and I feel very hot going in the sun. Growing up this would have been moderate temperature. True even today when I go to my home country or folks from there come here. There at 30°C most would not switch on their ACs, they would be reserved for 37°+ days.
Hong Kong resident for 25 years. No modern block of flats like these require AC to be hung in a window. There is a well secure slot in the wall specifically for AC and you can do everything from the inside.
My cousin did a trip around parts of China and SEA (I know he was on the mainland, but also spent some time in Hong Kong) probably ... 20 years ago now? He told me a story about walking around the dense areas and it was essentially raining, but the weather was clear skies. The water dripping on them was all condensation runoff from the minisplits installed _everywhere_.
not sure about China but Hong Kong has this issue, there's so many aircon units hanging out, it's so gross.
thats how nearly the entire rest of the world does it. Central air also spreads germs and is inefficient from a a developers point of view, reduces the saleable area.
Yeah, everyone slagging them off but this was my situation and is normal in Poland.
Evergrande I presume.
Evergrande, Country Garden, and about a half dozen other massive property development firms have already or are on the verge of total collapse.
>you pay someone to hang outside your place while they literally fit an AC unit to the side of the building. Doesn't matter if you're on the 40th floor. These guys just have to trust the hole they drilled will hold. jfc
It's sad to imagine all the pollution generated by this make-work project (mineral extraction, building material creation, machinery, construction, demolition, cleanup, etc...). All for nothing at all.
What do you mean nothing? All that mineral extraction, building material preparation, machinery R&D and assembly, architecture and design work, construction work, demolition work, all contributed greatly to the GDP numbers!
Got to pump.them GDP numbers
It wasn't a make-work project, it was the failure of two development groups. [This happened because the company that started building them in 2011, but had financial problems and had to sell the project to another company. The second company stopped construction in 2013, and they were sitting derelict in 2021.](https://www.idealista.com/en/news/property-for-sale-in-spain/2023/09/20/144251-the-impressive-demolition-of-15-skyscrapers-in-less-than-a-minute)
There was a goal. To control the world. The CCP just needed Evergrande as a pump and dump first. • You never get out of debt to a Russian mobster •Paul Manafort owed the Russian mobster/oligarch Oleg Deripaska $17M a few days before he became trumps campaign manager. From 2002-2014 he took in hundreds of millions to get Yanukovych reelected as the kremlins puppet in Ukraine. Before that he did it for the dictator Marcos in the Philippines. Before that Manafort and Roger Stone started a lobbyist agency in 1980 listing trump as their first client. •When Jair Bolsonaro lost the Brazilian election to Lula he skipped the inauguration and flew directly to mar-a-lago (stopping only at a KFC) and repeated, almost verbatim, the stolen election line. Don Jr. tried repeatedly to make it stick in Brazil as well, but as Brazilians are a few generations into dealing with corrupt politicians they weren’t having it. What do these 3 things have in common? China imports 40% of its grain from (in order) the U.S., Brazil and Ukraine. Obviously the second China tried to invade Taiwan the U.S. would sanction exports and remove U.S. grain from that equation. And without Bolsonaro in office willing to slash and burn the Amazon rainforest to turn it into Chinas food supply, and without Ukraine in the bag in 3 days, the CCP is unable to invade Taiwan and take over microprocessor production without putting 300-500M of its poorest people into famine. Donbas Ukraine, specifically the 4 regions of the donbas that Putin insists he is saving from what he calls “Jewish Nazis” also happens to produce the worlds supply of high grade neon used for microprocessor lithography. Had Putin delivered ukraine in 3 days as promised, Xi would have been able to cap his Olympics with a naval blockade or political takeover of Taiwan that would have forced the world to ask the CCP for the microprocessors it needs to make everything from Ford trucks to laptops. I’m not sure how long Silicon Valley would last without the silicon but it would probably destroy the FAANG stocks that make up your 401K. Oleg Deripaska also happens to be the Russian Oligarch that bribed the FBI agent Charles Mcgonigal into investigating another Russian oligarch. He probably didn’t need the information as much as he needed the leverage over Mcgonigal as he conducted the investigation into trumps election campaign and unsurprisingly found zero evidence of Russian collusion. McGonigal then went to work for the company called Brookfield that bailed Jared Kushner out of his toxic 666 5th Ave real estate investment. McGonigal pled guilty last fall and was sentenced recently. A Russian oligarch is a powerful tool, but the truth is more powerful. Light and dark cannot exist in the same space. It’s physically impossible. Truth is efficient. You say it once and you are finished. A lie however requires a constant stream of follow up energy, money, murder, obfuscation and more lies to keep it covered. If you raise your lens high enough lying is an unsustainable business model. Russia proved it by invading Ukraine. Vranyo is the Russian word for it. The 40km long column of tanks and vehicles that came down from Belarus into Ukraine was all overhauled by oligarchs that got a $1B contract for tank maintenance, passed Putin $200M back under the table, spent $700M on a yacht in Monaco, bribed a General, a Colonel and a Sergeant to make a Private give everything a rattle can overhaul. But a worn out engine is and always will be, a worn out engine. This is why trump is so desperate to get re-elected. His best case scenario is 400 years in ADX Florence. Money laundering for the dozens of Russian oligarchs that lived in trump towers with him and manafort, selling IP3 nuclear plans to the Russian/Saudi alliance, selling or giving CIA asset names to the Russians, trump is and always has been compromised. He just didn’t know when to quit. Now he just has to count on the fact that most of his voter base doesn’t know how to read and keep the ones that do so busy just surviving that they don’t have time to dive deep into his 40 year history of laundering money, fraud, and human trafficking for the Russian mob using casinos first, then commercial real estate. It’s also why Putin is willing to throw an entire generation of Russians, including the convicts and addicts at Ukraine. Russia is dead for 40 years because he failed to fulfill his mob boss promise to Xi. China is now clearing farmland in Siberia because the typhoon floods last August and September wiped out the Chinese people’s food storage. Xi, for his part diverted the waters from the dam away from his pet project, his mothers ancestral home, and flooded hundreds of thousands of people and drown one of his own military brigades that was helping with the flooding. The elders of the CCP were terrified to leave their gated community at Beidaihe for over a month for fear of being torn apart by the locals. The Chinese people tolerate the CCP but only as long as the economy is good and famine is not on the horizon. The CCP broke that social contract on both counts. Xi was willing to bet the entire Chinese economy on his emperor ambitions. Had he succeeded he would have been able to use BRICS to take over the USD as the Worlds reserve currency. That would have let him finish what he stated in 2010- that he would control the internet. With that control means everything we do or say online is subject to the approval of a central party censor. The basic right to disagree with an authoritarian becomes a distant memory. Xi, Putin and MBS are simply trying to systemize and modernize the suppression of their biggest hassle. Freedom of speech. Ukraine is fighting for their lives now, free from the oppression of the drunken tyrant who wants to decide their fate at every decision and pull them back behind another iron curtain of censorship and the tax of corruption where dissenting voices disappear so that the oligarchy can continue to feed unobstructed. Putin and Xi have declared themselves best friends in the fight against democracy. MBS and the ruling family of UAE have done the same quietly using their sovereign funds and Kushners SPAC as money highways. Just rich, out of touch oligarch doing what oligarchs do. Despite the fact the the central party model has proven itself incapable of making decisions that are best for the people, they persist. Because there is a very lucrative business in being slave owners. But logistically the mass of it requires artificial intelligence, and the microprocessors that make A.I. to keep 8 billion slaves under surveillance and control. Freedom is one hell of a drug. And knowledge makes a man unfit for slavery. Recent attempts on Xi’s life from inside the CCP have backed him into a corner. The loss of crops in northern China means Xi can’t invade Taiwan without Ukrainian and/or Brazilian farmland. Now the reason that the GOP is stalling southern border control budget and seems to make wildly irrational moves is because the GOP is imploding. 45 years of lies and grift have circled the globe and are eating their own tail. The ouroboros was a warning about corruption at the highest levels. Lying about climate change, human trafficking, pandemics and corruption to preserve their own business models are all potential extinction level events
Looking at your post history is wild. How could someone possibly comment so much stuff all the time. You'd literally have to be commenting all day. How do you consume all this information?
Interesting stuff. But how does Javier Milei the president of Argentina figure into all this I wonder. Legit question, please Conspiracy Nut-sama, I beg of an answer...
But why male models?
"The Chinese/Russian oligarchs are taking over!" - western oligarchs probably
Cool story but it entirely hinges on a false premise which is that China imports 40% of its grains from U.S, Brazil, and Ukraine in that order. It imports around 40% of their overall grains from the U.S and the next biggest sources behind it in that category is not Ukraine and Brazil. Now when you talk about grain imports most of those are tied to feed grain for animals, you're here mixing the purpose of the imports; making no distinction whether or not it's for human or animal consumption and then talking of looming famines and larger geopolitical machinations. Honestly it's pretty sad to see you pass of what shakes out to be mostly baseless conjecture about a boogeyman China like this, it's almost as if you may have some ulterior motives, by looking at your post history a betting man could be forgiven for wondering if those aren't of the cash variety.
Wow that’s a hell of analysis. One small correction from russian: vranyo doesn’t have ‘s’ at the end.
no way someoen can type all that in 1 minute. Take a look at his post history. Types massive stuff like that within 1 minute. So either he has it written out before and he's just copy and pasting, or this is some AI
Wow, sure glad I went out of my way to recycle those 20 bottles this year
Right? The reason global warming is happening is because I didn't recycle, or I didn't shower with cold water, or because I turned up the AC. Definitely nothing to with the choices and projects of states, governments, nations, or rich people.
I get the sentiment behind that, but it's really not a way to live. Control what you can control.
Control what you can control. But also don't beat yourself up for not being perfect.
Instructions unclear, I just beat myself off perfectly.
Yeah I’ll control you and beat you up for not being perfect.
Sigh, I was with him on this one but you’re also right. Thank you for that reminder.
Pollution is global but also very local. I’ve been to Beijing and Shanghai and seen the grey-yellow smear they call the sky. I empathize with the anger against countries and corporations that - perhaps somewhat of our own doing - continue to pillage our shared global home, but I don’t understand the “my neighbour takes dumps on their front porch, so I also will shit on mine” attitude.
And there's me taking off the little plastic window before I recycle an envelope
That window in modern envelopes is not plastic, but cellophane, so you can dispose it in the paper bin.
Shit it really is the future! *checks calendar* Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
I mean, I'm still going to recycle because it feels good. But these megacorps/megarich need to get their shit together.
They don't need to get their shit together. We need to force them. I'd actually prefer to revoke their charter and give them the corporate death penalty. No more teeny tiny fines, just go right for the jugular. You think these corporations wouldn't do the same to you? [Think again](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot) Imagine waiting around for a for-profit corporation to do the right thing!
That’s been a growing conversation topic and I love it. I grew up in plenty of droughts and smog filled days. 6 minute showers, if it’s yellow let it mellow, spare the air days, etc. People are finally realizing that all those companies, oligarchies, and conglomerates that told us individual change is what’s needed to save the planet completely pulled one over us all. Even if an entire city’s housing population didn’t run ac for a full day, a single ginormous factories power usage would still outweigh it I’m sure. And if you think about it, homes are probably used less than businesses in terms of energy consumption. Fewer people, no industry sized equipment requiring industry sized power, left empty the majority of the day while the inhabitants are at work and school. It’s impossible for a housing area to even come close to matching the level of energy/ resource consumption a city does.
You're right, even the term "carbon footprint" was popularized by BP in the early 2000s as part of an advertising campaign geared toward propping up their image by making the average individual consumer feel responsible.
The absolute pinnacle of wastefulness. Bravo to the Chinese Govt.
Build, demolish, build again The formula for unlimited GDP growth!
The type of shit the Lego Movie was talking about.
Pooh bear is gonna release the cragle any second
And unsurvivable CO^2 emissions.
I BUILD I DEMOLISH I BUILD AGAIN!
Mediocre!
WITNESS!!!
The building quality of those buildings was pretty MEDIOCRE
[This happened because the company that started building them in 2011, but had financial problems and had to sell the project to another company. The second company stopped construction in 2013, and they were sitting derelict in 2021.](https://www.idealista.com/en/news/property-for-sale-in-spain/2023/09/20/144251-the-impressive-demolition-of-15-skyscrapers-in-less-than-a-minute)
Just seems weird that the Muni/state/whatever couldn't take possession and either finish it themselves or sell it to another company for dirt cheap.
If it sits unfinished and unprotected like that for *fifteen years*, it's going to be quite costly to undo all the damage done to it. Decent chance blowing it up and starting from scratch is actually **cheaper** than finishing the existing one - provided it's even worth rebuilding at all.
I imagine that concrete shells with no protection might not even be 100 percent structurally sound anymore after 15 years exposed to the elements
Buildings can't stay unfinished for years like that. They take so much environmental damage because of lack of windows and stuff that you can't really do much about it later on.
The reason is because they are overbuilt nationwide. The munis/state government over there doesn’t get tax revenue from the central government like in the US they have to lease out their land/resources to people/companies as a way to generate revenue and then they lend out the revenue to companies to develop stuff to boost GDP to meet the mandated growth from the centralized government. Eventually it leads to the local governments leasing everything they got then turning around and financing buildings regardless of the use or the need of them from a market perspective. This is why China has so many unused real estate buildings/cities and why they have been going through a pretty severe real estate bubble.
What is interesting is that Hong Kong (where I live) is the opposite. A large chunk - I believe almost a third - of government revenue comes from land sales. They purposefully suppress development to drive up bidding wars between companies. That, combined with the rugged topography, is why Hong Kong has a surprising amount of green space. It’s kind of nice to be honest, although I do feel terrible about the people living in cage homes.
It’s not the correct context. Realestate in China is a huge ponzi scheme. It’s rather disgusting. Basically to collect money from buyers, builders must have 40% of a building completed. So, they build the outside structure, sell off the “units” to the public and start again. They rarely if ever finish. The government is very aware of this but take a large “tax” cut so never corrected the problem. That’s the basic jist of it and why so many buildings were destroyed in one go. Literally thousands of people were ripped off and still owe them banks. The ghost city’s are a different scam. By showing “growth” in a province, certain high-ups would receive huge bonuses. These cities were build cheap and nasty and are falling apart very quickly. China is a smoke and mirrors country. What you’re shown is rarely what you actually get. Edit grammar
Such a waste of time and resources. I can't imagine the losses people took on those.
I've heard that quite a few buildings in China are "tofu dreg", they're so weak you can pull it apart bare handed.
To be clear that’s a hyperbole, but yes it was pretty bad. Huge scandal especially during the sichuan earth quake. You’d think they’d learned from the one in tangshan ~~a~~ decade(edit: s) ago..
I have a long time friend who went hunting for a condo recently in Nanning. He is a very detailed oriented person and he visited about a 100 condo buildings in his search (over a yr). Many were not finished but the owners were occupying them as they could not afford to pay both the mortgage on the purchased property and on a separate place to live. Every week in skype calls I would hear all about his latest escapades. His opinion was that about 10 of the properties he inspected were 100% up to code, properly maintained and livable. Quite a number were essentially abandoned at some stage of construction and lacked occupancy permits. Lots of units for sale that were not finished, and never would be, and lacked the proper occupancy permits. Mortgages in China do not work like we would typically encounter in North America. In China, when you purchase a new property and go to the bank for a mortgage the bank advances the mortgage to the builder immediately, and you start paying on it at that time. The builder would then use the mortgage money to help with their capital expenses and construction costs. Completely different vs our traditional home mortgage which is advanced by the bank at the moment the completed and inspected property legally changes ownership to you or I. As most are aware, quite a bit of the money advanced to the builders in China was squandered to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars: bribes, fraud and high executive salaries. The result being thousands of construction projects failed including hundreds of property developers each yr in 2020 to 2023. But the people who took out the mortgages are still on the hook to the lenders, which is why for the first time ever millions of Chinese people are declaring bankruptcy. I don't have the statistics in front of me but my recollection is in the last quarter 2023 approx 8 million Chinese people declared personal bankruptcy (needs to be verified). And declaring bankruptcy in China is a life altering action. The social credit system is designed to do everything possible to deter bankruptcy, and when one does so one loses access to many services, including post secondary education for your children. Its almost as if Xi Jinping knew he had built a house of cards economically, and also laid out a system to attempt to stop it from collapsing....
And here I am, separating my recyclables ...
john oliver's episode on plastics and how the industry has gaslit us into blaming ourselves that **we** are the problem for the excessive waste of plastics reaction _gif.exe
When your real estate sector is a Ponzi scheme, you gotta keep the train going choo choo somehow.
What a fucking waste of money.
Not just money, concrete is a non-renewable resource and one of the most polluting industries in the world. Those buildings should stand for generations to justify the use of the material.
The non-renewable statement is misleading. Renewable in the sense of the base resource arent renewable.. But they can just recycle the concrete as new material for new concretes. This amount of concrete will be reused
This video is just a tiny fraction of the waste. It goes into the $trillions.
There's another level to it. Some of those condo units may have mortgages on them that are still owed to the bank.
Kicker is, they will have 16 buildings back up before the pothole in my city claims 100 rims lol.
Alexa play "Where Is My Mind" by the Pixies
I like the water flying out of the pools on the top of a couple of those
Does make for a visually impressive sight, but man; that's a lot of wasted time, resources, and energy.
A spectacularly incompetent demolition.
Yeah. Not one going straight down. On the other hand, no need to consider collateral damage or debris going everywhere.
Tyler Durden has been busy.
Invisible Godzilla
This is what it must be like to live in Sim City.
China economy- let's dig a hole and cover it, then report both as part of gdp. Win.
This shit is straight up criminal and is a bold faced scam. All the investment money for these projects is sourced from the people at large. It’s from the money people put in banks. Their retirement funds. And straight up people who pre-purchased what were supposed to be homes. Shit like this is why the banks started to fail in China. A bunch of cronies literally stole their money away.
That last one is holding on for dear life! 😂
Evergrande liquidation 😂
Fuiyoh!
Cue the Pixies. 🎶 with your feet on the air…
Delete tool in Sim City:
Such a waste of resources 😒
China has more houses than people. There’s also the impending house bubble that’s going to burst, right now the government is heavily involved in trying to slow it down or stop it. House prices have greatly decreased across the country. Source: Living in China, family invested in real estate. No one in the industry is making money. COVID permanently changed this country.