We’ve been covering China’s “Ghost Cities” for over a decade here, vast, newly-built cities with sparse populations amidst empty condos and malls.
Now a guy with a video camera has revealed that a tower at the heart of the very real city of Shanghai (China’s largest, and the fifth largest in the world) is mostly empty, but lit up at night to look occupied.
Matthew Tye: “‘Look at the city at night. You see all this viral footage and stuff.’ And they go, ‘Let’s go inside some of these buildings, see what they look like.’ We took you inside one. I think it was in Chungdu where the guy went up all the floors and he’s like, ‘There’s literally nothing in here.'”
Winston Sterzel: “All of them were empty.”
MT: “But they have lights on, these very nice lights on. This guy took it a step further and he goes, ‘You know, I’m going to take you to Shanghai where everything should be full. Everything in the the Shanghai skyline should be being used for office space because this is a this is where you want to be in China.”
WS: “The most sophisticated, richest city.”
WS: “We’ve coined the term China is the land of shortcuts and facades, and this is a perfect example.”
WS: “I think probably 90% of tourists that go to China end up in Shanghai.”
MT: “Or Beijing.”
WS: “Beijing, Shanghai, one of those big ones. They know this, okay? So, they’re going to have a lot of foreign eyes on. So, they make sure that the the skylines look impressive.”
WS: “Know that when you go to these big fancy cities, you’re looking at a very curated version of what China Chinese government wants you to see. It’s not actually China. It’s like ‘This is our best face we’re going to put forward for you to see. Just don’t go behind the scenes.'”
Despite it being an office tower at the heart of one of China’s biggest cities, the elevator looks “disgusting” and dilapidated.
People “mix up Japan and China and think that they’re similar. They’re not even close.”
Fifth floor. MT: “It’s empty. It’s decrepit.” But the lights are on right near the windows to give the illusion of occupancy.
Tenth floor. WS: “They’ve got the blinds half down. So some of them are half down, some of them are half open. It gives that that impression that there’s like slightly dimmer, slightly brighter lights on the same level. So it gives you this idea that oh there, you know, people in there.
MT: “All fake.”
Eleventh floor: This one is occupied, but all the lights are on even though everyone has gone home. WS: “That’s probably going to be a mandate by the building management is that even when you go home, you don’t turn the lights off.”
MT: “We did see a mini documentary about Chongqing about how they’re telling up how cheap it is to run all these lights in this city to make it look impressive or whatever, and it’s definitely on a government level. It is part of the propaganda department in some way.”
MT: “This is like a gleaming hypercity, right? Where everything, the economy, is on the way up.”
Video on another empty floor: “A homeless person could just come up and sleep here.”
MT (sarcasticly): “Oh, but there’s no homeless people in China!”
WS: “There are. Everybody who is Chinese knows there are homeless people.”
Video: “Don’t automatically believe all that ‘interior glow’ stuff.
The video then shifts to show footage of a rural elementary school that’s been converted into a chicken farm, tying in to our previous posts on China’s population being vastly overstated.
Consider this another reminder that everything in China seems to be smoke and mirrors all the way down. Keep this in mind every time you hear how China is catching up to or outpacing the U.S. in AI, semiconductors, weapons…just about anything, really.
Shortcuts, facades and tofu dregs everywhere, and in everything.