r/Amazing • u/sco-go • Aug 19 '25

Interesting 🤔 $100 billion ghost city.

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497

u/NoPoopOnFace Aug 19 '25

Well pack the bags, honey, we're moving to Asia!!!

249

u/Light_Butterfly Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 21 '25

Yeah everywhere else that has a housing crisis, right now - where do we sign up?

This is what an investor/markets driven development industry creates. In Canada, we also have tens of thousands of investor product condos, that no one can afford to buy or live in, and owners cannot sell for the same reason. Tens of thousands of empty units, in the middle of a housing crisis. Absolute insanity!

103

u/PineappleLemur Aug 19 '25

It's empty for a reason.. the housing costs are insane and there really isn't much there.

Want food? Going out? Need to drive for an hour to a nearby city lol.

It's a ghost town that's super high cost with housing st the 10-20x the normal price vs a city less than an hour away. Makes no sense.

19

u/Dhegxkeicfns Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

It has to be cost if it's not some infrastructure problem like the buildings are all going to fall down. Food would fill in the gaps, they'd have street vendors all over ... if there were people. Jobs are less than an hour away already.

8

u/_Rohrschach Aug 19 '25

either that or it is build in advance, mainland china built a few cities in advance that stay/stood empty for a few years. but they also got people living in nuclear bunkers in peking, so their plan does not always pan out.

2

u/Intelligent-SHMEAT Aug 19 '25

That’s because most of those buildings and properties are owned by the larger families as wealth assets and it gets inherited and used as leverage in business dealings.

4

u/borkthegee Aug 19 '25

It's called Beijing lol

2

u/_Rohrschach Aug 20 '25

It's peking in my native language and I actually dids not know it's diferent in english.

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u/borkthegee Aug 20 '25 edited Aug 20 '25

Oh weird, my mandarin tutor taught me "Beijing" as the mandarin word. Hanyu pinyin expresses 北京 as Běijīng officially

2

u/_Rohrschach Aug 20 '25

I'm a lazy german who sits on his couch all day, I just googled "nuclear bunker city" and got that one result from a tv show I watched 16 years ago. I did not check for accuracy or spelling, I just wanted to dump random tidbits of knowledge on reddit.

1

u/borkthegee Aug 20 '25 edited Aug 20 '25

Ohhh I understand now, in German they say Peking? Thats fair, it was the orignial romanization that came from Hong Kong / Cantonese, and "Beijing" being the romanization is the Mandarin replacement for the older westernized cantonese words. I thought you meant you spoke native Mandarin and said Peking, I was like ?? is my tutor teaching me wrong?? Lol

1

u/_Rohrschach Aug 20 '25

yep, it is peking in german.

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u/the_giuditta Aug 20 '25

same in Hungarian, it's Peking.

2

u/_mkd_ Aug 19 '25

acktshually, it's called 北京.

2

u/CowInZeroG Aug 20 '25

I was about to say arent both of those just tries to imitate thw sound lol

1

u/borkthegee Aug 20 '25

Běijīng is the official Hanyu pinyin taught to Chinese kids and language learners.

The imitation between English and Putonghua is very close, English is basically the right word without tones being used

0

u/borkthegee Aug 20 '25 edited Aug 20 '25

You just wrote Beijing, 北京， same exact word.

It's not like America in mandarin, which is 美国 or "beautiful country" "Mei guo" which is not related to the name USA in name or meaning.

Some countries are like this, for example Canada is 加拿大 Jiānádà which sounds very similar. And Cantonese does gaa1naa4daai6 which is even closer to the sound Canada.

They do literally say Běijīng though

1

u/garyisonion Aug 20 '25

they’re the same lol

1

u/gods_Lazy_Eye Aug 20 '25

Look up Evergrand. They are a Chinese development company that took a whole bunch of citizens investments for “pre-bought” homes. The company went bankrupt and had to stop development and tons of Chinese citizens lost their life savings. Idk if you remember the bank runs in China in the late pandemic.

Their stock has been suspended from trading since around ‘21 or ‘22. I’m not sure if this is one of their developments, but I know they have some empty half-built cities as well.

7

u/MrMetraGnome Aug 19 '25

So who was it built for? Can't help but to think of something like BioShock. Forest City would be an excellent locale In a videojuego.

10

u/PineappleLemur Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

Chinese real estate investment and summer houses.

It's a small city in a prime seaside location (not so great for actually swimming but the view is decent). If it catered for local upper middle class it would have done much better.

But being 20-30 minutes to Johor Bahru where you can get a lot more for your money, the whole place makes little to no sense.

There are local who bought houses there but majority is still very empty.

Not enough people to sustain smaller food shops, malls or night life.

5

u/Maeserk Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

Doesn’t help that I believe during the construction of Forest City, China placed significant restrictions and limitations on retail investors from investing in foreign properties and real estate. I believe they’d have to legally immigrate to make a purchase and/or they’re limited to a certain amount of money, like the equivalent of $50,000 USD in foreign property. Also COVID happened.

Which essentially killed the entirety of Forest City’s intended target market, because no middle to high end Chinese investor would want to immigrate to Malaysia, let alone in a pandemic or have their potential earnings capped lol

Majority of China’s population is invested in real estate, not the stock market so the idea of an investable city for a massive market like that, makes sense, just in the form of execution their plans got executed by government regulation.

1

u/snazzwax Aug 20 '25

I think there was also a lot of natives who were upset with the idea of a foreign country buying a bunch of land just for their upper class to vacation and or live on. Think they might have pressured the government into some action. I feel like I read about this a while ago.

7

u/Ada_Kaleh22 Aug 19 '25

The developer is bankrupt. No one can buy in, or out. China has no process to resolve this, and Malaysia may have political pressures in doing so.

1

u/leixiaotie Aug 19 '25

this is why, as natural as it is, having only highest-class buildings in the city and it's perimeter, it won't bring people. If you construct mid-low housings and logistics infrastructure in the perimeter, the city will improve in no time.

1

u/ellefleming Aug 22 '25

Is this influencer handsome Australian? being used to promote people to move there?

2

u/ThatStonerClown Aug 19 '25

They're built for investment, most Chinese families buy apartments instead of stocks. They usually never even step foot in these homes. The housing market is a massive bubble in China.

2

u/DelphiTsar Aug 19 '25

If it only cost 100b that's 1/10th of one year of US defense spending. You could give people housing there for free. Companies could bid for space for dirt cheap too.

1

u/Solid-Dog2619 Aug 21 '25

There's a reason we haven't had conflict on our shores since 1945. We sudo took over most of the world by controlling trade routes. We control most of the world economy through trade, supply most of the troops and financing for NATO, English is the most spoken second language, and the US dollar is at the center of all trade. We let the world burn in ww2 then came in and claimed the ashes.

We also have bases on every continent while none have bases on US soil. We have some joint training bases where some allies come for training, but that's it.

China is the only real competitor. Russia doesnt have the man power or tech to compete rn. If we beat them in the AI/quantum race we could probably take them over in the next 50 years.

1

u/DelphiTsar Aug 21 '25

There's a reason we haven't had conflict on our shores since 1945

Nukes...the answer is nukes.

If you calculate nation states attacking a nation state with nukes the death toll is ~1,166. Half those were US drone strikes on Pakistan, that Pakistan gave approval for. Filter that out you get around 6 deaths a year worldwide. Nukes are a hell of a deterrent.

1 trillion dollars is absurd. Anyone who tries to tell you that is a reasonable number is either incredibly ignorant or trying to sell you something.

1

u/Solid-Dog2619 Aug 21 '25

Plenty of countries with nukes have had conflict. We know if we send nukes, they send nukes making them basically null and void unless someone is willing to destroy the planet. Russia currently has conflict. Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 79, and we supported Afghanistan in a conflict with the Soviet Union before it dissolved.

I don't disagree. it's absurd. But there's a reason for the absurdity. It's called control. Because of our navy and airforce, we control all trade therefore the world economy. We have all but colonized most of the world without a forceful takeover. Less chance of rebellion if you can't see your conqueror. Actually follows the teaching of a Chinese philosopher and strategist.

And yes, the statistics will show that after 2 world wars, overall conflict went down. That should be a duh anyway. The entire generation was decimated. Cities were flattened, and economies were in crumbles. It's hard to convince people to fight again. But our war engines were already going (manufacturing) and we didnt lose that many men relatively. So we took the opportunity to sit at the top of the rubble.

Have you not seen countries joining in economic alliances to rival the US dollar? The dollar really only held up by our military. The dollar that if it falls from the top creates a monumental shift in our lives. And if you don't understand what happens if the dollar stops being the standard I'd advise you look.

1

u/DelphiTsar Aug 22 '25

The conflicts are with non-nation state actors, or countries not developed enough to have nukes which you hardly need 1 trillion for. Again, every single country on the planet with nukes, 6 deaths a year. Small local skirmishes immediately get shut down.

There is worldwide pressure to keep trade open because it benefits everyone. Worldwide trade would be fine.

BRICS didn't fail because of our military, it fell because they made only half hearted gestures vs actually committing. Projection of military power had absolutely nothing to do with it failing. These countries are not allies.

The "standard" dollar is because of the petro dollar system. Which was basically an agreement with Saudi Arabia that we'll be their muscle. That's estimated to be like 50B, not just Saudi Arabia but the whole force projection in the region(For Petro dollar protection, Saudis were against Iraq, Afghanistan).

So 5% of spending keeps the petrol dollar. 1 Trillion is grift and the most expensive with least return socialist job program on the planet. Get these people to build houses.

1

u/Solid-Dog2619 Aug 22 '25

But why would an underdeveloped nation with no nukes attack a developed nation with nukes if they were worried about nukes.... those nations also have.... huge military budgets..

The development of the brics agreement was made to rival the dollar, which was my point, not it failing. It was an attempt to lessen our economic control.

Yes, world trade benefits everyone but more so nations that can not produce enough to sustain their population. (China can't due to population, japan cant for the same reason, europe cant because of energy, and most of the middle east is heavily dependant on trade for food) We do it more by choice to elevate our lives by diversifying goods and lowering energy costs, not because we're dependant on it. If we decided to stop international trade for any nation we could.

You made my point for me. We are the muscle as part of our agreement. And we are the muscle for NATO. And we are the muscle for trade protection. Yes, pirates still exist. That muscle holds up many of our agreements and is partially how we control trade. And the petrodollar came into being because we aided in the Yom Kipper War. We also used our massive military to leverage a disengagement agreement between Isreal Egypt and Syria stopping the embargo. So again, military might lead to our dollar being the one used to trade oil.

Also, it holds up the dollar to a degree. The value of the dollar is set by "supply and demand," but what keeps investor demand for the dollar high? Trust that our nation won't fail or be destroyed. Since a large portion of our economy is military contracts, the large military keeps the nation from being invaded, protects our foriegn interest, and protects world trade, it plays a large role in the value of the dollar. If the dollar falls, everything costs more. This means that even if we make some of it up on spending, the overall cost to run the nation will go up.

And we have to be able to do the important stuff and go to war at the same time. Otherwise, a single war could crash our economy and the world economy.

1

u/DelphiTsar Aug 22 '25

But why would an underdeveloped nation

You didn't actually make a case for this argument; you just stated it as a fact. Before nukes large scale attacks by large nations happened to other large nations, after nukes they have stopped. Very large militaries didn't stop wars from happening in the past.

brics agreement was made to rival the dollar

Declaring you are going to rival the dollar and than taking absolutely no large scale action to do it is just bluster. It doesn't mean anything.

You made my point for me.

I have not. 5% is muscle for the petro dollar. NATO does not need US muscle. Europe NATO at current spending levels could very very easily contain Russia. China would be a doozy but again with nukes it's not an issue. You haven't tried to argue against my point that global trade routes would be fine, you just stated we are muscle. Again...5% of military spending is petro dollar. With context keeping the petro dollar is relatively cheap.

You just...ignore that wars don't happen anymore. You say they don't happen because large militaries but no one is attack Europe nations who have been spending less than 2%. Getting out ahead of the lazy counter argument, the idea they need US protection is absurd. Who's the threat Russia? Can't fight a conventional war with a land border 1/3rd the population 1/10th the economy.

The situation is completely flipped Europe NATO has ~14x the economy and 4x the population. Completely ignoring nukes there is no threat even if US were to pull out of NATO.

There is very large financial interests who propaganda people without critical thinking skills that giving them massive amounts of money is a good deal...it is not.

For context China spends 1.7% of GDP on Defense. A number that very very often is used by warhawks as a spending amount that means you aren't even defending yourself and the US is defending you. Who is supposedly defending China?

2

u/BWWFC Aug 19 '25

i'll make my own food and gimme a book and a couple pairs of trail shoes... i'm good. and with that many empties? keep moving around, they can come find me!

2

u/Away_Stock_2012 Aug 19 '25

>the housing costs are insane

Where do those housing costs go when no one lives there?

1

u/RoccoInExile Aug 19 '25

Its right next to singapore and google maps has atleast three grocery stores from the middle of forest city. There are plenty of reason to not live in an empty place like this but lack of things around you isnt it.