As the wind whistles through half-finished skyscrapers and over empty boulevards, a development billed as China’s answer to Manhattan at times bears out the “ghost town” label some have given it.
Chinese officials hope the towers of the Yujiapu Financial District (于家堡) will one day house a trading center to rival New York’s Wall Street or London’s Canary Wharf.
However, more than three years after construction began, all but one of the buildings planned for the development in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin appear unfinished, alongside vacant spaces where others should stand.
Photo: AFP
As China’s economic growth slows after a decades-long boom, these buildings — many of which still lack exterior walls — about 150km from Beijing raise questions about the viability of the scheme, which media say will cost a total of 200 billion yuan (US$32 billion).
Billed as the largest hotel in Asia, the Country Garden Phoenix Hotel (碧桂園鳳凰酒店) is an empty husk, with no builders in sight near its curved exterior, but there are some signs of life in Yujiapu, a chunk of land peppered with more than a dozen skyscrapers in various states of construction jutting into the Hai River.
Construction workers in hard hats and loose-fitting jackets measure up glass for some buildings, and a shopping center had a sprinkling of customers on a recent visit by reporters.
However, no buildings apart from the mall appear to be finished — a prospect likely to worry local authorities who reportedly hoped the project would open last summer.
In the “Conch Bay” development on the opposite bank, incomplete buildings have been fenced off and its wide roads see almost no pedestrians.
Several reports have labeled Yujiapu a “ghost town,” but some argue that it could in time achieve its goals, citing the development of Shanghai’s bustling Pudong district — which some dismissed as a waste of money when it was first planned in the 1990s.
The Tianjin project has a powerful backer in Zhang Gaoli (張高麗), the city’s former top official who was promoted to China’s Politburo Standing Committee in 2012.
Analysts say its success will depend in part on a central government plan to create a new “economic corridor” that will connect Tianjin with Beijing.
“If the two cities become integrated on a policy and economic level, I think that Yujiapu is really promising,” said Zhu Guozhong (朱國忠) of Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management.
On the side of one of Yujiapu’s unfinished tower blocks, a huge banner lists a telephone number, seemingly inviting inquiries for office space. When the number was called, it turned out to be a real estate agency — but the woman who answered said she had not heard of the project.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day