Inside the World’s Biggest Ghost City — Xi’s Xiong’an Disaster скачать в хорошем качестве

Inside the World’s Biggest Ghost City — Xi’s Xiong’an Disaster

Sign up for my free email newsletter — The China Crash Chronicle. It takes 10 seconds, it’s completely free, and you’ll immediately get the full stories nobody else is telling. 👉 Sign up here: https://caoken.net/free-newsletter/ World’s Biggest Ghost City? The Truth About Xiong’an “Not one drop of water enters Xiong’an.” In the summer of 2023, that order redirected floodwaters away from Xi Jinping’s showcase city and into surrounding towns, drowning villages to keep a half-empty “millennial capital” dry. This video investigates how a project sold as China’s next Shenzhen or Pudong became a symbol of political vanity—built on wetlands, shielded by force, and emptied by design. I break down why Xiong’an New Area was doomed from the start: it sits in a historic floodplain south of Beijing, a drainage basin crisscrossed by rivers and marshes. Instead of acknowledging geography, the state chose optics—opening sluice gates, submerging farmland, and sacrificing communities to protect a city few want to live in. We connect the dots from the 2017 announcement to the 2023 Hebei floods, from “non-capital functions” relocation schemes to bans on property speculation that repel real residents and real markets. To make sense of the hubris, I pull a lesson from history: Tongwan City (419 AD)—a grand desert capital that dazzled briefly, then died. Xiong’an is its modern twin: impressive renderings, weak fundamentals, a legacy project chasing immortality while ignoring economics, trade routes, and human behavior. Deng Xiaoping’s Shenzhen and Jiang Zemin’s Pudong worked because they leveraged location, ports, and global connectivity. Xiong’an tries to bend nature—and people—to political will, with whispers of feng shui added for good measure. What you’ll learn Why Xiong’an’s location (low-lying floodplain) makes the project structurally fragile. How the 2023 floods exposed “politics over people” decision-making. The difference between market-driven success (Shenzhen, Pudong) and decree-driven showpieces. How relocation mandates, SOE transfers, and speculation bans create an administrative containment zone instead of a living city. Why Beijing’s own geographic weaknesses make “Beijing 2.0” in a swamp even less rational. Historical parallels: Tongwan City and the recurring fate of vanity capitals. What political reform and merit-based site selection would look like in a future China. Watch Next: Beijing is Literally Unlivable — And the Dumbest Capital in the World    • Beijing is Literally Unlivable — And the D...   Keywords Xiong’an New Area, Xiongan ghost city, Hebei floods, Beijing relocation, China urban planning, China real estate crisis, Shenzhen vs Xiong’an, Pudong vs Xiong’an, Tongwan City history, Xi Jinping legacy project, China infrastructure vanity projects, China flood control, non-capital functions, Beijing water crisis, Chinese ghost cities explained. Hashtags #Xiong'an #ChinaEconomy #GhostCity #HebeiFloods #Beijing #XiJinping #Shenzhen #Pudong #UrbanPlanning #ChinaRealEstate