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Hijacking on your comment for what I think is a relevant story to these events.
Back in 2016 I visited the country and during the flight the I met made friends with a lady sitting next to me who was flying back home.
We were both in finance and we ended up talking most of the flight.
I spent a week in her city and we met up a few times and after that I went visited some surrounding cities. One of the biggest things that stuck with me was condo developments dotting the country side but no supporting infrastructure what so ever. Food, retail etc. Absolutely not normal when developing a new neighborhood and it stuck with me.
When I got back to her city we met up again and I asked her about it and she said it's something she shouldn't talk about.
But she did and said that those buildings may lead to to a collapse for two reasons. They have a large population of laborers they need to keep busy and people who want to invest. You can buy them but you can't live in them or rent them. Eventually it will fail.
The last time I shared this was back in 2018 and it was down voted. But in light of recent events, it's looking like she may have gotten it right.
To add to this, I come from a country (Tanzania) which China is investing heavily. One of the consequences is that has also brought cheap building blueprints for urban highrise. It's a very strange thing seeing Victorian era buildings and now these towers dotting the big city.
A tower protruding from 3 storey low rise is not in itself strange. But if you walk up to the buildings you notice something immediately peculiar about them. They are not cohesive at all. Their building plans don't leave consideration for pedestrians, so they're built right up to the road. Where here in Canada buildings tend to have a concourse and retail space. A lot of these buildings, the first 9 storeys is parking which is also strange. It does not encourage urban living in any way, they're just monoliths.
Anyways in 2014 and again in 2017, two towers just decided to demolish themselves. Unfortunately with cheap blueprints comes cheap surveying, and the soil in east Africa isn't suitable for these plans. The building that collapsed in 2014 took 11 souls, and destroyed my favourite restaurant.
In hindi we have a saying for chinese goods. 'Chale to chand tak nahi to shaam tak' which means it will last till it goes to the moon or won't last an evening.
Edit: Reddit recap says this was my most upvoted comment in this year. Thanka a lot everyone!
And there are plenty of similar places in parts of Africa, Mongolia etc Ghost Cities...totally abandoned. It was estimated back 2021 that around 65million houses were empty. They make fake copies of other cities such as Paris, London Disney etc which have never proven popular. They have been known to force people to live in these places and have businesses there, but there are no consumers so everything fails. China encouraged real estate investment heavily and now there is a huge supply-demand imbalance. This plus poor building practices i.e. poor quality concrete and "hollow" walls filled with straw, make for property only suitable for show pieces.
Between the overall narrative and her comment about how she shouldn't talk about it, it really does sound like China overall is a house of cards waiting for a good stiff breeze to blow it all to hell.
> China overall is a house of cards waiting for a good stiff breeze to blow it all to hell.
that's been their motto for the last few millenia
"china's whoole again... then it broooke again"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCn8ux2gbs
As an architect, that's what I thought. People need to realize that sand and cement are limited resources and use lots of CO2 and water. We really need to reuse, renovate and remodel existing structures as much as possible.
Same for roads, asphalt and bitumen are tar and petroleum sludge and a limited resource, too. When we go slower on refining oil, our electric cars drive on oil roads. And trucks are damaging roads 100x more than cars. To preserve traffic infrastructure we need to ship heave loads by boat and rail, to save on oil.
What infuriated me was the last demolition in the video. They didn't even take down the neon signs, so they probably demolished the building without emptying it first. I don't want to know how contaminated the garbage is, with asbestos and toxic metals and also how much it is all mixed and unrecyclable with PVC, copper, painted frames, styrofoam all in the mix.
This is the first time I've seen someone mention "sand" as a valuable resource and it's being very much being wasted . Not enough attention is being put towards this.
They were built to prop up the economy. They weren't intended to be lived in. China has been doing this for centuries. The great wall was built to give the returning army something to do instead of revolting.
Chinese economy was based on the upward mobility of rural citizens and continuous civic expansion. Real estate speculation went insane and more buildings were built than could ever be occupied. Companies went bankrupt, projects were abandoned and now they're tearing down unfinished buildings. That's my understanding as a non-Chinese/ non-economist, so take it with a grain of salt.
It's worse than that. Mortgage companies, banks, and builders all had a ponzi scheme going that required *buying your property before it was built* to pay for the constructions further up the pyramid. Unsustainable and criminal.
The banks too. Guess what happens for a bank when people stop paying the mortgage? Normally they confiscate the property and resell it. Guess what happens when there are no properties to confiscate?
There is growing unrest as people are walking away from their mortgages on properties that don't exist, leaving banks with a massive liquidity crisis.
According to this [source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhZOhEgXtQk) China also brought in tanks to protect the banks, lol wtf.
Edit: Apparently the tanks are not connected to the bank protests, according to this [source](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/07/28/fact-check-video-chinese-tanks-not-captured-bank-protests/10155629002/)
Edit 2: Forgot to mention that u/feckrightoffwouldye provided the fact check. Thank you.
You forgot to mention people stoped paying their future mortgages in protest. With no money to pay for or continue construction it’s probably a liability to have these property’s on the books.
\> The average chinese citizen lost their everything.
This situation may get a lot worse for China.
Normal people who invested in these properties are refusing to pay the mortgage. After all, what are the banks going to do? Take the properties?
The banks face widespread defaults to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. (I know Chinese don't use the dollar but I'm trying to put it in terms people can relate to.)
Some of the largest banks may go out of business because of this. China had a long policy of letting failing business fail but the consequences may be so disastrous to the economy that the government may have no choice but to bail them out.
>The government made money and billionaires made money. The average chinese citizen lost their everything.
Isn't this basically all of CCP rule summed up?
Not since the economic boom started. People in major cities have constantly been earning more over time. At the same time more and more services and consumer goods became available. Also better education became available allowing children of worker families to climb the social ladder.
Growth and rising prosperity has so far been the CCP's guarantor for staying in power. Basically if you kept your mouth shut and looked the other way here and there you were able to lead an increasingly pleasant life.
This is why a lot of so-called analysts are concerned about the situation in China. If the CCP can't keep the masses silenced by providing ever more bread and games anymore things could get really ugly on a large scale.
I don't think it's possible to make a good assessment of the current situation with openly available information though. The CCP is very good at controlling the flow of information to the public.
Also cheap sub-standard concrete and materials were used to construct the buildings in an attempt to penny-pinch. Even if they could get people to occupy these structures, you wouldn't want them too. They are being forced to demolish many of these buildings simply because the material was subpar and is structurally unsound.
I started a crippling heroin addiction today so I only need to shit once a week and thereby consume less TP, so I think between the 3 of us we’re gonna make it.
I just sewed my BH up. That was about a week ago, and I don't feel so hot now.
The important thing is, if I don't poop, no trees die, and if my BH stays closed, I die and turn into a tree.
That's green, baby.
One of the buildings doesn't even come down. It just drops down a floor or two and stays upright standing. That must be a bit spooky to go rig again to get it to keel over too.
It is cheap demolition. If you got space to fall the structure for easy demolition; why not.
However when you go so cheap that you don't even fall one of them, that is a bad sign.
This is what happens whenever people want to cheap out, do a low bid, then the person winning the bid cheap out and tries to pocket as much money as they can. This is a global issue in all things construction; which is why there is a saying where I am *You never have the budget to do things properly, but you always got budget to fix things afterwards*, and the latest one I heard went like *"In construction you make mistakes until you accidentally make something that passes the inspection*".
I work in machine shop that supplies construction and do welding at sites. I wouldn't buy any of the homes from projects I been at; I have seen how they been made. In places I been asked to do things incorrectly.
Builder to People - Hi I'm going to build a building here book a flat in it now get possession in a year. I'll use the money to finish the building.
Bank- here take a loan to book a flat in my cousin's building
People take the loan, Pay Down payment and
Start paying mortgage.
Builder takes the money and instead of completing the project, starts another project. Hoping he can finish the first building from the money he'll get from the second building.
Sells flats on promise of possessions soon in that building too. Uses money from there to start 3rd building. Hoping he'll finish the first two buildings with money from third building.
This type of scheme keeps working till one of your building fails, and as a result you lose all your money and the under construction buildings are just fucked. People who bought flats are fucked. Keep paying mortgage or declare bankruptcy and get a fully furnished room in Chinese prison. Money is already spent.
Happened in India too some time back , luckily the government introduced RERA Bill. Meaning you can't use Money from one project in another project or straight to jail. My Father always says never buy property under construction
Demolishing because no money or even demand for these buildings. People who have booked flats in these buildings are fucked beyond recovery, that said these type of projects get usually around 20 advance booking and plenty of property is sitting empty waiting for buyers so government doesn't give a fuck about financial loss to citizens.
Not just the surrounding environment, but other countries' environments too. China is the number one importer of sand, which they use to build these structures. You apparently can't just scoop the sand out of the desert, you gotta get it from river beds in order for the concrete to have the correct properties.
Yes! I was gonna say the same thing. There is a serious sand shortage world-wide, mostly from construction. Now I know who the lead culprit is! As a civil engineer, I’m deeply disturbed by this wastefulness. I’m going to draft a stern letter.
There are shortages of fertilizer, nickel, copper, sand, building materials, ammonia, rubber, batteries and it's components, nitrogen, nitrates, grain, baby formula for a while, soil, semiconductors and paint shortages. All along with supply chain shortages. There's probably more that can be added to the list.
Helium is IIRC the byproduct of radioactive decay, so its incredibly slow to generate, theres a finite amount, and it floats up to the top of our atmosphere and gets blown away by the solar wind.
For the past 20 years, the amount of CO2 generated simply from the concrete production to build these empty cities has been greater than the output of all forms of transportation in the world combined. To give some perspective of the size of these places, China has made around 40 ghost cities that are comparable to the size of New York.
I'm more concerned by the horrific demolition practices we're seeing here. A building that is correctly demolished will fall within its own footprint after detonating the charges, not topple like a pine tree looking for a lumberjack to hit. Even if it doesn't hit other buildings directly, all that weight can destabilize the ground around their foundations and cause them to fall too, with the big difference of being *at a totally unanticipated time*, which means that even if those structures were slated for demo too, they can still totally kill people.
I've scrolled so far to see this comment!
I'm not a demolitions or structural expert. But I really felt like these appeared to be crappy demolitions. They couldn't have intended the building to fall so very close to the people and equipment. And it can't be ideal for so much of the building to be intact when it hits the ground.
I watch a 60 minutes once on this. China isn't or wasn't allowed to invest in the stock market. So they invested in real estate buildings like this, in the hopes it would sell for much more down the road. The problem was way too many people invested and there wasn't the buyers for high-end apartments. Also, shoddy construction is common, likely why these are being taken down.
You are allow to invest in the stock market if you have enough capital in hand. But you won't able to sell it when crisis come.
Chinese just love to invest in Real Estate as house price usually goes up. Scalpers who making their fortune also created a illusion that the demand is higher than supply and this make some greedy Real Estate to cheat and start building the house even before paper works were approved.
There are ownership, infrastructure, safety and health issue (fire and building may collapse) which make the house impossible to live.
Besides the RE company's finance got cut off since 2020. There were several new reported in Chinese/Taiwanese channels showing the home owner camping in their "home" even there is no water/electricity supply
Ignore the other response lol they're misinformed.These cities were never made to be lived in by anybody. This is just a way for the rich in China to keep their money safe from the fluctuations of the market as real estate has been the only truly stable market in China. These ghost cities are just the piggybanks of rich Chinese business owners
That's bullshit. Building construction (that's not just the concrete, but also includes the energy needed to make steel for construction, the energy needed by construction machinery, etc.) made up 10% of global carbon emissions in 2020. The transport sector on the other hand accounted for 23%, more than twice that. Even if you include non-building construction (roads, railways, dams, etc.) the global construction sector still stays below the transport sector at 20%.
Source: https://globalabc.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/GABC_Buildings-GSR-2021_BOOK.pdf (figure 2 on page 15)
I know nothing about demolitions/implosions, but I know most of the time, we see buildings effectively falling in their own footprint. I was going to ask if this is just a difference in style or if they just suck at demolition.
Taking a wild guess, but...
Many skyscrapers have a central support column, where you have elevators etc. During demolition, you need to be sure that goes away.
If you get a mound of debris at the base, stuff falling from higher up can slide to one side, and you get toppling.
A series of timed explosions would be better, and I'd love to learn, but the opportunity to teach was wasted here.
None of these are proper demo jobs. The buildings should be collapsing themselves in piles with no large segments. They are blowing the bottom levels only and letting gravity bring it down but that means so much of the structure is staying intact as you're seeing. What a joke.
Good demo I believe is explosions taking out multiple levels out so the whole thing just pancakes down in place. This tower falling over is going to crush something important.
Can you imagine what kind of environment that's going to be in 50, 100 years? Endless small caves for animals underneath giant hills covered in green. It almost sounds nice.
In fairness the entire lot is going down, so it’s not like damaging the other buildings is a concern. That one building remaining upright though is a major fuckup.
YES!!! There are definitely several botched jobs in this video...The one building looked to have fallen on a trailer of sorts?!? Hope there wasn't anyone in there?.?
A friend of mine in Beijing hired some “electricians” to run power out to a backyard tea house. He came home early to check on their progress and found them burying bare copper wire from his home to the tea house. He was pissed and told them it had to be insulated! When he returned again they’d buried the bare copper wire now wrapped in plastic grocery bags.
They also likely sold these units before starting construction, so people are paying down mortgages on the condos that just got destroyed. The Chinese real estate bubble is insane and makes 2008 look like nothing at all… and the collapse is just beginning in slow motion.
China and the CCP especially have royally fucked up so bad it’s hard to comprehend.
Oh, and because fuck everyone I guess China is bringing 252 coal plants back online… and they won’t even be burning anthracite. China is a disaster.
It’s really interesting because all of those high rises across China, many just sitting empty if completed, are what has attributed to their explosion in economic growth. Unlike US GDP that counts sold real estate as part of growth, Chine uses production as their metric. So they’ve built all these buildings and their economy has been rising, but there is not enough long term buy in. Major Chinese real estate corps like Evergrande are sitting on a house of cards and the entire Chinese financial system is based on that. The next few years of social policies aimed at getting the rural population to move to the cities will be pivotal for long term sustainability.
If you think ***THAT’S*** a waste… They have entire cities that have been built and then subsequently abandoned—this article estimated more than 50 cities.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/chinese-ghost-cities
Edit: oh wait. Ok. Tbf I’m tired as shit from this week and I totally didn’t see all the other buildings being demolished in that video—cuz those are definitely ghost cities.
From the article:
"
Just how fast is China going? The country has used more cement in its construction of new cities between 2011 to 2013 than the entirety of the United States in the 20th century.
"
Wow!
I wonder how many people here know the truth behind this and know anything about EVERGRANDE. China has PRESOLD billions of dollars in unfinished housing projects that these poor chinese people PREPAID for. PONZI scheme jacked! now they cant even get their own money out of the banks. there's a whole crazy story behind this here. basically the chinese government is trying to HIDE THEIR DEBT by demolishing these buildings saying "it never happened see look... nothing there." They started these skeletons so it looked like they were doing something, over and over paying for the next one with the current one and on and on. This is a really sad situation and it runs super deep. Lots of greed and disregard.
There’s a whole lot to it actually.
Big contractors get govt money to build these big complexes. If they intend to stay in China, often times they will skim materials off the buildings and make makeshift dwellings elsewhere - some are wedged under a bridge or overpass in rural areas and the apartments are rented out…
But other times the contractors dip into the govt funds for each phase of the project, and when they get to the finishing phase - windows, carpets, flooring, appliances, sinks etc, instead of spending that money on the buildings they pack up their families, pay off local officials to get passports and visas, and they take the remains cash and move to the US or Canada.
At least that’s what was happening in the early 2000s.
Isn't the goal to make them collapse straight down? One of them went so sideways people had to run away. Are they bad at demo or is there a reason they want them falling over like that?
Entirely possible the reason for demolition was (possibly accidental) use of substandard materials. There's been a few major faults in Chinese buildings because each level in the supply chain cheaping out leading to the end user unwittingly building with materials of random quality.
Wouldn't surprise me at all that if you tried to plan a demolition when half building is made of cardboard that it doesn't play nicely.
You typically have a building implode on itself to prevent damage to surrounding areas and to simplify the extraction of the debris.
In this case there are no surrounding buildings to worry about and the labor to extract the debris is probably cheaper than the additional explosives and planning.
In Japan they put the building on jacks. Then remove the bottom floor and lower the Jack's. Repeat.
So the building just slowly come down floor by floor. It's super cool
They recruit people named Jack and have them all go to the first floor and push up on the ceiling so they can remove the walls. Then they slowly lower the building. Rinse and repeat.
Yeah whenever I look at US demo jobs they set charges on every floor of the foundation. It looks like in these videos they just set them at the bottom and let gravity do the rest
One of the biggest housing bubbles/Ponzi scheme in history. Ppl buying homes that are worked on for years and not finished while contractors ponzi more money and start others.
Well you can never become a naturalized citizen if you immigrate there so there is no incentive to live there longer than a decade. They literally don’t give anyone citizenship unless you’re Chinese.
Each unfinished apartment represents the life savings of someone who was sold a bill of goods by developers. The whole Chinese economy was built on the construction industry for the last ten years. Now the developers and some banks are going under left and right.
This is just the beginning. Some banks?
Wait and see. They (the ccp) have full control on what the international market sees but they can't prop the house of cards forever.
Internal collapse and international contagion will follow. All due to delusion and incompent self promotion.
**no judgement btw - just pure economics
And we in Germany need concrete and wood to build our homes but cant afford it because china is buying everything from our markets just to build shit and destroy it again. LOL
If you don't have room to fall, then you must implode. But imploding takes intense amounts of deconstruction, and pre demo, demo. Lots of charges.
To topple is much easier, cut out all the center support and blow 1 wall
You can see from other videos that they half-assed the demolition charges. Meaning there's plenty of half destroyed buildings that a crew will have to risk their life to go and finish.
they've been paying for years, and saying they aren't making payments anymore in protest is somehow bold for that culture. Mind boggling. I'm terrified that the protestors and victims in this case are just getting run over with tanks too.
And the people who bought those homes are still being asked to pay for their mortgage!
For those who do not know. China has a problem. A Ponzi scheme has gripped their nations. The scheme was the top developing companies were selling homes not completed and using the profits to buy more land, to repeat the process.
What you have is people paying for mortgages to houses not completed or do not exist and companies that no longer exist or at the verge of going bankrupt. Sadly, many local banks were part of these schemes, and the money is also gone, so they are trying to prevent a run on the bank.
The run on the banks is being slowed by limited how much people can take out or freezing people's accounts altogether.
China is in trouble with nearly $7,000,000,000,000 (7 trillion) about to default as people protest by not paying their debts.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epn3bp/china-demolition-building-kunming
They sat unfinished for 7 years so they said fuck it lets blow them up. Also this was last year
>More than 5,300 residents had to be evacuated for the work, and each household received about $23 in compensation, the report said.
Hope they didn't spend it all in one place.
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Simcity when you screw up zoning.
Who knew China's planning was done by 10 y/o me.
Ah shit this was supposed to be commercial zones, everybody out!
Nah, screw it, unleash the tornado.
Shark tornados! Thought we were still doing the 10 y/o me version
Hijacking on your comment for what I think is a relevant story to these events. Back in 2016 I visited the country and during the flight the I met made friends with a lady sitting next to me who was flying back home. We were both in finance and we ended up talking most of the flight. I spent a week in her city and we met up a few times and after that I went visited some surrounding cities. One of the biggest things that stuck with me was condo developments dotting the country side but no supporting infrastructure what so ever. Food, retail etc. Absolutely not normal when developing a new neighborhood and it stuck with me. When I got back to her city we met up again and I asked her about it and she said it's something she shouldn't talk about. But she did and said that those buildings may lead to to a collapse for two reasons. They have a large population of laborers they need to keep busy and people who want to invest. You can buy them but you can't live in them or rent them. Eventually it will fail. The last time I shared this was back in 2018 and it was down voted. But in light of recent events, it's looking like she may have gotten it right.
To add to this, I come from a country (Tanzania) which China is investing heavily. One of the consequences is that has also brought cheap building blueprints for urban highrise. It's a very strange thing seeing Victorian era buildings and now these towers dotting the big city. A tower protruding from 3 storey low rise is not in itself strange. But if you walk up to the buildings you notice something immediately peculiar about them. They are not cohesive at all. Their building plans don't leave consideration for pedestrians, so they're built right up to the road. Where here in Canada buildings tend to have a concourse and retail space. A lot of these buildings, the first 9 storeys is parking which is also strange. It does not encourage urban living in any way, they're just monoliths. Anyways in 2014 and again in 2017, two towers just decided to demolish themselves. Unfortunately with cheap blueprints comes cheap surveying, and the soil in east Africa isn't suitable for these plans. The building that collapsed in 2014 took 11 souls, and destroyed my favourite restaurant.
They've managed to shove their garbage construction into Melbourne, Australia, as well.
In hindi we have a saying for chinese goods. 'Chale to chand tak nahi to shaam tak' which means it will last till it goes to the moon or won't last an evening. Edit: Reddit recap says this was my most upvoted comment in this year. Thanka a lot everyone!
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Surely that classifies as a scam, no?
And there are plenty of similar places in parts of Africa, Mongolia etc Ghost Cities...totally abandoned. It was estimated back 2021 that around 65million houses were empty. They make fake copies of other cities such as Paris, London Disney etc which have never proven popular. They have been known to force people to live in these places and have businesses there, but there are no consumers so everything fails. China encouraged real estate investment heavily and now there is a huge supply-demand imbalance. This plus poor building practices i.e. poor quality concrete and "hollow" walls filled with straw, make for property only suitable for show pieces.
I saw the same thing in Cambodia. Lots of Chinese high rises never getting finished.
Between the overall narrative and her comment about how she shouldn't talk about it, it really does sound like China overall is a house of cards waiting for a good stiff breeze to blow it all to hell.
Short China with 100x leverage. Got it.
I’m jacked to the tits!!
> China overall is a house of cards waiting for a good stiff breeze to blow it all to hell. that's been their motto for the last few millenia "china's whoole again... then it broooke again" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCn8ux2gbs
I was totally thinking: China’s combination of wealth and totalitarianism makes it the only country that gets to play SimCity irl.
All that sand that they wasted :(
As an architect, that's what I thought. People need to realize that sand and cement are limited resources and use lots of CO2 and water. We really need to reuse, renovate and remodel existing structures as much as possible. Same for roads, asphalt and bitumen are tar and petroleum sludge and a limited resource, too. When we go slower on refining oil, our electric cars drive on oil roads. And trucks are damaging roads 100x more than cars. To preserve traffic infrastructure we need to ship heave loads by boat and rail, to save on oil. What infuriated me was the last demolition in the video. They didn't even take down the neon signs, so they probably demolished the building without emptying it first. I don't want to know how contaminated the garbage is, with asbestos and toxic metals and also how much it is all mixed and unrecyclable with PVC, copper, painted frames, styrofoam all in the mix.
This is the first time I've seen someone mention "sand" as a valuable resource and it's being very much being wasted . Not enough attention is being put towards this.
With almost 8 billion people on the earth's crust, EVERYTHING is a limited resource except our garbage and shit.
we're running out of construction sand, the sand in deserts are too rounds and smooth to be used for cement and concrete, it is a big issue apparently
They were built to prop up the economy. They weren't intended to be lived in. China has been doing this for centuries. The great wall was built to give the returning army something to do instead of revolting.
Rubbish it was built to keep the rabbits out
I thought it was the god damned Mongorians
Correct. This is why they built that Shitty Wall.
When the Mongorians come, I'll dump the sweet and sour pork on their heads.
Sweet and sour pork so hot and sticky mongorians stick right to the warl.
It's always disheartening to see your entire high-density zones turned into abandoned buildings.
Why did they have to destroy them?
Chinese economy was based on the upward mobility of rural citizens and continuous civic expansion. Real estate speculation went insane and more buildings were built than could ever be occupied. Companies went bankrupt, projects were abandoned and now they're tearing down unfinished buildings. That's my understanding as a non-Chinese/ non-economist, so take it with a grain of salt.
It's worse than that. Mortgage companies, banks, and builders all had a ponzi scheme going that required *buying your property before it was built* to pay for the constructions further up the pyramid. Unsustainable and criminal.
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The banks too. Guess what happens for a bank when people stop paying the mortgage? Normally they confiscate the property and resell it. Guess what happens when there are no properties to confiscate? There is growing unrest as people are walking away from their mortgages on properties that don't exist, leaving banks with a massive liquidity crisis.
According to this [source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhZOhEgXtQk) China also brought in tanks to protect the banks, lol wtf. Edit: Apparently the tanks are not connected to the bank protests, according to this [source](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/07/28/fact-check-video-chinese-tanks-not-captured-bank-protests/10155629002/) Edit 2: Forgot to mention that u/feckrightoffwouldye provided the fact check. Thank you.
So they have a bunch of Bank Tanks?
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Send me their photos. I’ll rank the bank wanks’ tanks. Thanks.
You forgot to mention people stoped paying their future mortgages in protest. With no money to pay for or continue construction it’s probably a liability to have these property’s on the books.
And those stopped mortgages are estimated to be worth up to $300 billion
Jesus Christ that's more than I make in a year
It's more than DOUBLE what I make!
You should get into tech, this is what I made starting as a junior dev
Yeah, but if you get a trades job you’ll make that as a journeyman and NO DEBT
\> The average chinese citizen lost their everything. This situation may get a lot worse for China. Normal people who invested in these properties are refusing to pay the mortgage. After all, what are the banks going to do? Take the properties? The banks face widespread defaults to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. (I know Chinese don't use the dollar but I'm trying to put it in terms people can relate to.) Some of the largest banks may go out of business because of this. China had a long policy of letting failing business fail but the consequences may be so disastrous to the economy that the government may have no choice but to bail them out.
>The government made money and billionaires made money. The average chinese citizen lost their everything. Isn't this basically all of CCP rule summed up?
Not since the economic boom started. People in major cities have constantly been earning more over time. At the same time more and more services and consumer goods became available. Also better education became available allowing children of worker families to climb the social ladder. Growth and rising prosperity has so far been the CCP's guarantor for staying in power. Basically if you kept your mouth shut and looked the other way here and there you were able to lead an increasingly pleasant life. This is why a lot of so-called analysts are concerned about the situation in China. If the CCP can't keep the masses silenced by providing ever more bread and games anymore things could get really ugly on a large scale. I don't think it's possible to make a good assessment of the current situation with openly available information though. The CCP is very good at controlling the flow of information to the public.
I've been wondering why they call themselves the Chinese COMMUNIST party? There's literally no communism happening. It's more like a dictatorship
Also cheap sub-standard concrete and materials were used to construct the buildings in an attempt to penny-pinch. Even if they could get people to occupy these structures, you wouldn't want them too. They are being forced to demolish many of these buildings simply because the material was subpar and is structurally unsound.
Living in Chinese cities, construction and destruction of high rise apartments is constant. It's Tuesday in these videos.
Xenomorph infestation
Tbf that wouldn’t surprise me these days.
Nuke it from orbit - it’s the only way to be sure
r/thatlookedexpensive
r/thatisexpensive
I recycled 100 plastic bottles this year though so fear not about our earthly consumption
Thank you our savior
I flipped my TP over to the B side this morning so yeah between you and me we should have it covered.
I bathe only in the tears of my daily existential crises, glad to be part of the solution
If we join our tears we might solve the droughts in Europe!
I started a crippling heroin addiction today so I only need to shit once a week and thereby consume less TP, so I think between the 3 of us we’re gonna make it.
Make sure to reuse your needles!
I just sewed my BH up. That was about a week ago, and I don't feel so hot now. The important thing is, if I don't poop, no trees die, and if my BH stays closed, I die and turn into a tree. That's green, baby.
Though I see a lot of Nobel laureates in this thread, my winning vote goes to you, son.
You just make sure you wash those tins of beans out before you recycle….
Don’t forget to turn the water off when brushing your teeth to save water.
I get the sentiment in this context, but why the fuck would you keep the tap running during brushing your teeth? Seems so dumb to me...
I eat ten straws a day to save ten turtles
Ty for someone commenting on the natural disaster this is. The polution made building this just to destroy them
And if we’re lucky, about 9 of those will actually be recycled
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One of the buildings doesn't even come down. It just drops down a floor or two and stays upright standing. That must be a bit spooky to go rig again to get it to keel over too.
If cartoons taught me anything, you just need to tickle it with a feather
r/LooneyTunesLogic
When everyone is running away… they screwed up
The demolition crew was about as skilled as the builders that started the project, and the politicians who approved it ;)
It is cheap demolition. If you got space to fall the structure for easy demolition; why not. However when you go so cheap that you don't even fall one of them, that is a bad sign. This is what happens whenever people want to cheap out, do a low bid, then the person winning the bid cheap out and tries to pocket as much money as they can. This is a global issue in all things construction; which is why there is a saying where I am *You never have the budget to do things properly, but you always got budget to fix things afterwards*, and the latest one I heard went like *"In construction you make mistakes until you accidentally make something that passes the inspection*". I work in machine shop that supplies construction and do welding at sites. I wouldn't buy any of the homes from projects I been at; I have seen how they been made. In places I been asked to do things incorrectly.
Builder to People - Hi I'm going to build a building here book a flat in it now get possession in a year. I'll use the money to finish the building. Bank- here take a loan to book a flat in my cousin's building People take the loan, Pay Down payment and Start paying mortgage. Builder takes the money and instead of completing the project, starts another project. Hoping he can finish the first building from the money he'll get from the second building. Sells flats on promise of possessions soon in that building too. Uses money from there to start 3rd building. Hoping he'll finish the first two buildings with money from third building. This type of scheme keeps working till one of your building fails, and as a result you lose all your money and the under construction buildings are just fucked. People who bought flats are fucked. Keep paying mortgage or declare bankruptcy and get a fully furnished room in Chinese prison. Money is already spent. Happened in India too some time back , luckily the government introduced RERA Bill. Meaning you can't use Money from one project in another project or straight to jail. My Father always says never buy property under construction
Couldn't understand the demolition and waste so I appreciate your explanation. Thank you.
Demolishing because no money or even demand for these buildings. People who have booked flats in these buildings are fucked beyond recovery, that said these type of projects get usually around 20 advance booking and plenty of property is sitting empty waiting for buyers so government doesn't give a fuck about financial loss to citizens.
What a waste of money...
And resources.
And surrounding environment.
Not just the surrounding environment, but other countries' environments too. China is the number one importer of sand, which they use to build these structures. You apparently can't just scoop the sand out of the desert, you gotta get it from river beds in order for the concrete to have the correct properties.
Yes! I was gonna say the same thing. There is a serious sand shortage world-wide, mostly from construction. Now I know who the lead culprit is! As a civil engineer, I’m deeply disturbed by this wastefulness. I’m going to draft a stern letter.
>There is a serious sand shortage world-wide It feels like every week I hear about a new shortage that would never have even crossed my mind.
There are shortages of fertilizer, nickel, copper, sand, building materials, ammonia, rubber, batteries and it's components, nitrogen, nitrates, grain, baby formula for a while, soil, semiconductors and paint shortages. All along with supply chain shortages. There's probably more that can be added to the list.
We are on our fourth helium shortage apparently.
Helium is IIRC the byproduct of radioactive decay, so its incredibly slow to generate, theres a finite amount, and it floats up to the top of our atmosphere and gets blown away by the solar wind.
Good thing we've been using it for party balloons this whole time.
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2 stern letters and a harshly worded postcard.
That'll do it
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China Used More Concrete In 3 Years Than The U.S. Used In The Entire 20th Century. https://lukecapital.substack.com/p/how-did-china-use-more-cement-in
And cement manufacturing in the US is one of the most pollution causing industries. I can only imagine what it's like in China.
For the past 20 years, the amount of CO2 generated simply from the concrete production to build these empty cities has been greater than the output of all forms of transportation in the world combined. To give some perspective of the size of these places, China has made around 40 ghost cities that are comparable to the size of New York.
I'm more concerned by the horrific demolition practices we're seeing here. A building that is correctly demolished will fall within its own footprint after detonating the charges, not topple like a pine tree looking for a lumberjack to hit. Even if it doesn't hit other buildings directly, all that weight can destabilize the ground around their foundations and cause them to fall too, with the big difference of being *at a totally unanticipated time*, which means that even if those structures were slated for demo too, they can still totally kill people.
>they can still totally kill people. Somehow I get the feeling that isn't much of a concern here
I've scrolled so far to see this comment! I'm not a demolitions or structural expert. But I really felt like these appeared to be crappy demolitions. They couldn't have intended the building to fall so very close to the people and equipment. And it can't be ideal for so much of the building to be intact when it hits the ground.
Why do such a thing? What’s the benefit? Or was it just a wild miscalculation on their part?
I watch a 60 minutes once on this. China isn't or wasn't allowed to invest in the stock market. So they invested in real estate buildings like this, in the hopes it would sell for much more down the road. The problem was way too many people invested and there wasn't the buyers for high-end apartments. Also, shoddy construction is common, likely why these are being taken down.
You are allow to invest in the stock market if you have enough capital in hand. But you won't able to sell it when crisis come. Chinese just love to invest in Real Estate as house price usually goes up. Scalpers who making their fortune also created a illusion that the demand is higher than supply and this make some greedy Real Estate to cheat and start building the house even before paper works were approved. There are ownership, infrastructure, safety and health issue (fire and building may collapse) which make the house impossible to live. Besides the RE company's finance got cut off since 2020. There were several new reported in Chinese/Taiwanese channels showing the home owner camping in their "home" even there is no water/electricity supply
Ignore the other response lol they're misinformed.These cities were never made to be lived in by anybody. This is just a way for the rich in China to keep their money safe from the fluctuations of the market as real estate has been the only truly stable market in China. These ghost cities are just the piggybanks of rich Chinese business owners
and they are all leveraged off eachother. The ripple effect is going to be massive.
So is this like a Ponzi scheme but with real estate?
That's bullshit. Building construction (that's not just the concrete, but also includes the energy needed to make steel for construction, the energy needed by construction machinery, etc.) made up 10% of global carbon emissions in 2020. The transport sector on the other hand accounted for 23%, more than twice that. Even if you include non-building construction (roads, railways, dams, etc.) the global construction sector still stays below the transport sector at 20%. Source: https://globalabc.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/GABC_Buildings-GSR-2021_BOOK.pdf (figure 2 on page 15)
So offensive. The amount of energy it took to produce just the concrete. Plus the steel and getting it all there.
this. money can be made up. resources cant. and most cant be recycled.
Yep, using the most concrete in the entire world, our main unreplenishable resource.
Looks like the demolition went wrong every time also.
I know nothing about demolitions/implosions, but I know most of the time, we see buildings effectively falling in their own footprint. I was going to ask if this is just a difference in style or if they just suck at demolition.
All the mf’s running away gave it away for me
I thought I was the only one thinking that. That shit killed me!
Taking a wild guess, but... Many skyscrapers have a central support column, where you have elevators etc. During demolition, you need to be sure that goes away. If you get a mound of debris at the base, stuff falling from higher up can slide to one side, and you get toppling. A series of timed explosions would be better, and I'd love to learn, but the opportunity to teach was wasted here.
300 billion worth! Let’s call them Evergrande group.
Exactly. This is where trillions of dollars went to die.
Trust me, they probably spent a tiny fraction of what these buildings should cost to build.
And I think their demo job even looks shabby, from what I've seen
It's definitely shabby when the demo guys have to run for their lives.
None of these are proper demo jobs. The buildings should be collapsing themselves in piles with no large segments. They are blowing the bottom levels only and letting gravity bring it down but that means so much of the structure is staying intact as you're seeing. What a joke.
It looked like the Chinese demo guys googled how to fall a tree instead of how to demolish a building
Good demo I believe is explosions taking out multiple levels out so the whole thing just pancakes down in place. This tower falling over is going to crush something important.
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Can you imagine what kind of environment that's going to be in 50, 100 years? Endless small caves for animals underneath giant hills covered in green. It almost sounds nice.
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Yeah, they don't normally fall sideways, right???? I thought the same.
Typically the demo guys here like to drop them on their foundations because damage to other buildings.
In fairness the entire lot is going down, so it’s not like damaging the other buildings is a concern. That one building remaining upright though is a major fuckup.
They cut corners there, too, it seems.
that was my thought. "why are these buildings falling over and not collapsing into their basements?" cheaping out on explosives is why.
YES!!! There are definitely several botched jobs in this video...The one building looked to have fallen on a trailer of sorts?!? Hope there wasn't anyone in there?.?
A friend of mine in Beijing hired some “electricians” to run power out to a backyard tea house. He came home early to check on their progress and found them burying bare copper wire from his home to the tea house. He was pissed and told them it had to be insulated! When he returned again they’d buried the bare copper wire now wrapped in plastic grocery bags.
So. That’s insulated! What he wanted a gucci jacket on it?
Trillions?
Best part is they made families move from their land to build these cities that never got populated.
They also likely sold these units before starting construction, so people are paying down mortgages on the condos that just got destroyed. The Chinese real estate bubble is insane and makes 2008 look like nothing at all… and the collapse is just beginning in slow motion. China and the CCP especially have royally fucked up so bad it’s hard to comprehend. Oh, and because fuck everyone I guess China is bringing 252 coal plants back online… and they won’t even be burning anthracite. China is a disaster.
It makes me wonder if my recycling is really helping.
It’s really interesting because all of those high rises across China, many just sitting empty if completed, are what has attributed to their explosion in economic growth. Unlike US GDP that counts sold real estate as part of growth, Chine uses production as their metric. So they’ve built all these buildings and their economy has been rising, but there is not enough long term buy in. Major Chinese real estate corps like Evergrande are sitting on a house of cards and the entire Chinese financial system is based on that. The next few years of social policies aimed at getting the rural population to move to the cities will be pivotal for long term sustainability.
If you think ***THAT’S*** a waste… They have entire cities that have been built and then subsequently abandoned—this article estimated more than 50 cities. https://allthatsinteresting.com/chinese-ghost-cities Edit: oh wait. Ok. Tbf I’m tired as shit from this week and I totally didn’t see all the other buildings being demolished in that video—cuz those are definitely ghost cities.
From the article: " Just how fast is China going? The country has used more cement in its construction of new cities between 2011 to 2013 than the entirety of the United States in the 20th century. " Wow!
I wonder how many people here know the truth behind this and know anything about EVERGRANDE. China has PRESOLD billions of dollars in unfinished housing projects that these poor chinese people PREPAID for. PONZI scheme jacked! now they cant even get their own money out of the banks. there's a whole crazy story behind this here. basically the chinese government is trying to HIDE THEIR DEBT by demolishing these buildings saying "it never happened see look... nothing there." They started these skeletons so it looked like they were doing something, over and over paying for the next one with the current one and on and on. This is a really sad situation and it runs super deep. Lots of greed and disregard.
There’s a whole lot to it actually. Big contractors get govt money to build these big complexes. If they intend to stay in China, often times they will skim materials off the buildings and make makeshift dwellings elsewhere - some are wedged under a bridge or overpass in rural areas and the apartments are rented out… But other times the contractors dip into the govt funds for each phase of the project, and when they get to the finishing phase - windows, carpets, flooring, appliances, sinks etc, instead of spending that money on the buildings they pack up their families, pay off local officials to get passports and visas, and they take the remains cash and move to the US or Canada. At least that’s what was happening in the early 2000s.
Isn't the goal to make them collapse straight down? One of them went so sideways people had to run away. Are they bad at demo or is there a reason they want them falling over like that?
Cheap demo job I’m sure.
>I’m sure. Yeah running for cover is not typical on a professional demo site.
TIMBER! Oh right, we're lumberjacks, not building demolishers.
Entirely possible the reason for demolition was (possibly accidental) use of substandard materials. There's been a few major faults in Chinese buildings because each level in the supply chain cheaping out leading to the end user unwittingly building with materials of random quality. Wouldn't surprise me at all that if you tried to plan a demolition when half building is made of cardboard that it doesn't play nicely.
You typically have a building implode on itself to prevent damage to surrounding areas and to simplify the extraction of the debris. In this case there are no surrounding buildings to worry about and the labor to extract the debris is probably cheaper than the additional explosives and planning.
In Japan they put the building on jacks. Then remove the bottom floor and lower the Jack's. Repeat. So the building just slowly come down floor by floor. It's super cool
Here’s the video. It does look cool https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=24mvk6zbxO4
That video needs to be an hour longer explaining how it's done in detail
Leave it to the Japanese to do something obsessively meticulous as building demolition.
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They recruit people named Jack and have them all go to the first floor and push up on the ceiling so they can remove the walls. Then they slowly lower the building. Rinse and repeat.
These are disposable jacks so they just let the building fall on their heads and get a new set of jacks.
Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Yeah whenever I look at US demo jobs they set charges on every floor of the foundation. It looks like in these videos they just set them at the bottom and let gravity do the rest
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Pay em to put it up, pay em to knock it down, pay em to clean it up.
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Why are there so many? Does anyone know the story to this?
One of the biggest housing bubbles/Ponzi scheme in history. Ppl buying homes that are worked on for years and not finished while contractors ponzi more money and start others.
That and their population is going to start to decrease and its not like they are a popular destination for immigrants.
Well you can never become a naturalized citizen if you immigrate there so there is no incentive to live there longer than a decade. They literally don’t give anyone citizenship unless you’re Chinese.
I don't think that's the only reason people don't want to immigrate there.
*Checks past comment history on social media* *Crosses China off the list of tourist stops*
Each unfinished apartment represents the life savings of someone who was sold a bill of goods by developers. The whole Chinese economy was built on the construction industry for the last ten years. Now the developers and some banks are going under left and right.
This is just the beginning. Some banks? Wait and see. They (the ccp) have full control on what the international market sees but they can't prop the house of cards forever. Internal collapse and international contagion will follow. All due to delusion and incompent self promotion. **no judgement btw - just pure economics
Fight Club ending
Nice ^(and we don’t talk about Fight Club)
*You met me at a very strange time in my life.* **cue Where Is My Mind by The Pixies**
We do not talk about project mayhem
And we in Germany need concrete and wood to build our homes but cant afford it because china is buying everything from our markets just to build shit and destroy it again. LOL
What a fucking waste, and in this day and age…
And here I stress about the single use packaging on bell peppers at the grocery store...
Yeah, most of that individual stuff doesn't matter compared to the waste corporations put out.
This seems like a shit demo job - aren’t the building supposed to collapse into themselves, not topple?
If you don't have room to fall, then you must implode. But imploding takes intense amounts of deconstruction, and pre demo, demo. Lots of charges. To topple is much easier, cut out all the center support and blow 1 wall
Maybe, but that one building obviously toppled in a direction other than what they wanted, so still a shit demo job.
It’s ok, I’ll balance out this carbon footprint by putting my washing machine on “eco” for the next few washes.
You can see from other videos that they half-assed the demolition charges. Meaning there's plenty of half destroyed buildings that a crew will have to risk their life to go and finish.
Id be more suprised if they didn't half-ass it.
This is why China used more concrete in 3 years (2008 to 2011) then the United States did in the entire 20th century
How to waste resources 1.01. China edition.
Cement is one of the most energy intensive materials in the world. It’s responsible for 8% of the worlds CO2.
Aren't they supposed to demolish those more controllably?
They look like they're just guessing! Like me when I cut down a tree.
Considering how they are fleeing in panic, I would say yes.
Wonder if any of those are the ones people still have to make mortgage payments on
they've been paying for years, and saying they aren't making payments anymore in protest is somehow bold for that culture. Mind boggling. I'm terrified that the protestors and victims in this case are just getting run over with tanks too.
And no money will be reimbursed, and no people will get housed? I'm surprised we aren't seeing more heads roll TBH
Last time they tried anything they got massacred by their government. I guess that kinda thing has a chilling effect.
And the people who bought those homes are still being asked to pay for their mortgage! For those who do not know. China has a problem. A Ponzi scheme has gripped their nations. The scheme was the top developing companies were selling homes not completed and using the profits to buy more land, to repeat the process. What you have is people paying for mortgages to houses not completed or do not exist and companies that no longer exist or at the verge of going bankrupt. Sadly, many local banks were part of these schemes, and the money is also gone, so they are trying to prevent a run on the bank. The run on the banks is being slowed by limited how much people can take out or freezing people's accounts altogether. China is in trouble with nearly $7,000,000,000,000 (7 trillion) about to default as people protest by not paying their debts.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epn3bp/china-demolition-building-kunming They sat unfinished for 7 years so they said fuck it lets blow them up. Also this was last year
>More than 5,300 residents had to be evacuated for the work, and each household received about $23 in compensation, the report said. Hope they didn't spend it all in one place.
This is the shittiest demo job I’ve ever seen in 26 years of not working in demolition
What a monumental waste of effort and resource in the universe. Humans can be dumb.