China launches test runs for world’s largest plant that can convert coal to ethanol::undefined

  • Oderus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    10 months ago

    China has ghost cities with empty apartment buildings. They have tons of resources to waste.

    • dmonzel@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      46
      arrow-down
      54
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      Tell me you’re living half a decade in the past without telling me. “Ghost cities” are actually areas where the state preplanned urbanization so everything would be in place when people started moving in. In fact, most of these “ghost cities” are actually populated now.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupied_developments_in_China

      Edit: could someone please explain why I’m being downvoted? I’ve provided a source to back up my statements. Or is this a case of “everything about China is bad because Red Scare”?

      • falkerie71@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        24
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        10 months ago

        There’s another side to this. “Pre-planning” without proper forecast led to the housing crisis we are seeing today in China, with one of the largest developers in China Evergrande defaulting and filing for bankruptcy. A lot of people who were promised a good property and sunk their life savings into the project, now have no choice but to live in unfinished buildings in ghost towns without electricity nor water.

        https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/10/31/crumbling-buildings-and-broken-dreams-chinas-unfinished-homes
        https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/china-home-buyers-occupy-their-rotting-unfinished-properties-2022-09-26/

        • umbrella@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          10 months ago

          I haven’t got into the article that much but sure, nothing is perfect.

          Is it better to not even try and pretend its acceptable for people to be homeless, like they do almost everywhere else?

          • falkerie71@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            8
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            10 months ago

            They’re not building apartments to give out to homeless people for free here. People actually had to pay for those properties and were scammed.

                  • falkerie71@sh.itjust.works
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    ·
                    10 months ago

                    Maybe I am. Like, I won’t pretend to be an expert, but the fact that they said “flooding the market with houses is a sound strategy” on one hand, and said it’s a problem that requires a resolution on the other, just says to me that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

                • umbrella@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  3
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  10 months ago

                  i have the feeling im the one talking to a brick wall.

                  would you rather pay rent to a banker for the rest of your life? flooding the market is a sound strategy to make cheap housing.

                  • falkerie71@sh.itjust.works
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    10 months ago

                    Flooding the market with unfinished buildings? Are you on crack or something? You have to actually finish it to call it “housing”. And again, those property were built to be sold, and they weren’t going to undersell them. Leaving both the buyer and the constructor with no money is not called a “sound strategy”.

            • umbrella@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              10 months ago

              at least you have something to criticize, ill take it over literally nothing any day.

              • falkerie71@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                3
                ·
                10 months ago

                Imagine being literally scammed into pouring your life savings into a property that is unfinished without electricity nor water, and then thinking “at least I have something so I shouldn’t complain”? Those people actually had something before, now they’re left with less than nothing.

                • umbrella@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  3
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  10 months ago

                  you are acting as if everything was a big scam and literally everyone lost everything.

                  in reality this same thing happens occasionally all over the world all the time and has many possible paths for resolution.

                  • falkerie71@sh.itjust.works
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    10 months ago

                    Sure. Please find me articles about places that have incidents happening in a large scale like this right now then. Or do big companies like Evergrande just default occasionally all over the world in your books?

      • Oderus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        20
        arrow-down
        9
        ·
        10 months ago

        I stated a fact and you bent over backwards trying to prove anyone who agreed with me was wrong.

        Ghost cities are real. It wasn’t a ‘everything about China is bad’ comment like you whined so that’s why you’re getting downvoted.

        Why get all defensive anyway? Is someone paying you to defend China from any criticism? You come across like you’re simping for China.

        Do you get upset when people talk about winnie the poo?

        • 4am@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          Defensive like downvoting facts?

          Yeah some urban preplanning didn’t work out but most of those cities are filled up to the point of working now.

          I remember back then all those articles - “China is building empty cities! Ha ha so dumb! Who’s gonna buy that, they all work in factories!”

          It’s pretty striking that an .ml user posted a comment defending a verifiable fact, and got 10 downvotes for being “uppity”. Oh, sorry for the Wikipedia link sir, I will think more about respect for all powerful America next time

          You guys really need to clean out your brainworms sometime, this shit is embarrassing

          • Oderus@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            10 months ago

            I said ghost cities exist, and then you said they didn’t. That’s being defensive and then you went after other people who provided facts and you just got more defensive… and here you are now, being defensive. Do you know what being defensive means?

            I don’t give 2 shits who downvotes you or why. Grow thicker skin if you can’t handle the internet son.

      • wikibot@lemmy.worldB
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        10 months ago

        Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:

        Under-occupied developments in China were mostly unoccupied property developments in China, and frequently referred to as "ghost cities" or ghost towns. The phenomenon was observed and recorded as early as 2006 by writer Wade Shepard, and subsequently reported by news media over the decades. Although a feature of discourse on the Chinese economy and urbanization in China in the 2010s, formerly under-occupied developments have largely filled up.

        article | about

        • cyruseuros@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          10 months ago

          Not weighing in on either side of the discussion, but that’s a video that’s almost completely unrelated to the topic above.

          It speaks to how overleveraged/poorly managed a lot of Chinese development was, leading to a borderline colapse of the construction industry, and largely leaves the subject of ghost cities unaddressed.

          • Jin@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            10 months ago

            Chinese projects / developments are short-sighted. It’s a Ponzi scheme, Get money from new investors, pay existing clients. So just keep building.

            They become ghost cities because building are not fully done for living, so people can’t even move in. The Infrastructure is incomplete like no proper transportation links, no jobs, no shops etc. there is literally nothing there.

            • cyruseuros@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              10 months ago

              Ok, now I get the link you’re trying to make, but it doesn’t fully adress my question.

              The one thing that’s still leaving me prickly is simply saying Wikipedia is wrong because it’s editable by anyone. That’s like saying FOSS is insecure because it’s editable by anyone. Neither the conclusion nor the premise is correct in either case. There are hierarchies & access controls in both that often yield better results than the traditional alternative.

              Wikipedia is a treasure, and while it is still vulnerable to brigading (far more so than FOSS), this is far from the norm (especially nowadays) and should be backed up with specific sources and rectified.

              While I do agree with you that Wikipedia shouldn’t be cited directly due to this vulnerability, it acts as an excellent contextual citation aggregator, and quite frankly I’ve often found it more up-to-date and less biased than some of the crap that made it past the peer review process in my college days.

              For instance, if what you’re saying is true (shortsightedness), people may over the years still populate those areas (the claim of the Wikipedia article is that a lot/most of the ghost cities did). If you have sources stating otherwise, please report the article for manipulation and include them there. If you don’t feel like it, post them here and I will do so, despite knowing absolutely nothing about Chinese ghost cities, because I believe this is important.

              Please don’t dismiss such a shining example of human collective action so lightly. It’s one of the few things that makes me believe there’s still some good left in the world.

              • Jin@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                10 months ago

                Never said Wikipedia was wrong I’m just saying be careful because people can edit to fit their narrative, which has happened with like Russian and Chinese topics.


                Sadly a lot properties are unfinished and left to rot away and will get demolish.

                https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/04/investing/evergrande-stock-gain-resume-trading-intl-hnk/index.html

                https://youtube.com/watch?v=Om6b0_ffyFQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=tj0-6am9cMY

                • cyruseuros@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  10 months ago

                  I’m starting to believe this is a bad faith argument. Do you have anything addressing the specific point of ghost cities actually (not) being populated now?

                  For those that are too lazy to read:

                  • link 1: 39 buildings demolished for illegal construction
                  • link 2: 50 second clip of 7 buildings that were never finished being demolished (no context, other than the buildings being there for some years)
                  • link 3: luxury mansion development stalls due to missmangement/lack of funding, leaving people that paid for those homes without a property
                  • Jin@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    ·
                    10 months ago

                    https://youtube.com/watch?v=UPwtUTrwKRI wasted time and resources because everything is shortsighted and mostly affect the buyers.

                    How could they?

                    • Unfinished buildings.
                    • Housing market collapsing.
                    • Everything on build on ponzi scheme.
                    • Youth Unemployment has never been higher.
                    • Biggest real estate players are in huge debt.
        • dmonzel@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          6
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          Wikipedia sources are fairly old

          A few of the sources are literally from 2023. But do go on, it certainly seems like you’re here in good faith, right?

          • Jin@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            5
            ·
            edit-2
            10 months ago

            Yeah, I’m not saying there isn’t anything newer “A few” vs what’s up to date

            Wikipedia isn’t great place for sources because everyone can post and edit. We taught in school never to source Wikipedia for that reason.

            Wikipedia banned seven users after reported ‘infiltration’ by a Chinese group https://www.engadget.com/wikipedia-banned-seven-users-after-reported-infiltration-by-a-chinese-group-104143971.html?

            China and Taiwan clash over Wikipedia edits https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49921173

            I’m here in good faith 🙏

            • dmonzel@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              10 months ago

              Wikipedia isn’t great place for sources because everyone can post and edit.

              Then you can check the sources listed in the article. You’re not just supposed to take Wikipedia’s word for it, but you are allowed to click on the links in the references section. So either you’re not aware of this, or you’re not making this argument in good faith. In either event, because looking at the several sources in the wiki article I provided seems like it’s still not good enough for you, I get the feeling this conversation is going nowhere.

              • Jin@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                arrow-down
                5
                ·
                edit-2
                10 months ago

                Yeah, we should stop because you are not getting what I’m saying and probably can’t see why you being downvoted.

                Cheers

      • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        10 months ago

        It’s the attitude we don’t appreciate.

        Also, you’re on the back foot to start with on a .ml account.