On September 27, 2013, China Review News published a report on the failure of the urbanization process in Ordos, one of the twelve major subdivisions in Inner Mongolia, the People’s Republic of China. After 10 years of muddled urbanization in which the government caused overheating in the real estate market and in which almost all residents participated, Ordos, a coal mining city, is now an empty city where most of the new buildings are vacant. As a result, billions in wealth has been lost with the burst of the property bubble. Now, all local-governments as well as ordinary residents have to find ways to repay their debts.
As previous rural villages have been demolished, ex-farmers, now urban citizens, stand idle and feel helpless. They have lost all their relocation money in private financing related to real estate development. When property development was hot, these ex-farmers, without any money and no flocks of sheep, had to find jobs as construction workers. In the most recent couple of years, they could not even find any construction jobs because all construction sites have been shut down.
Source: China Review News, September 27, 2013
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