Chinese Gotham clone no longer a ghost city – China latest business and technology news

Business & Technology

A summary of the top news in Chinese business and technology for May 17, 2017. Part of the daily The China Projectย news roundup "Belt and Road protests, plus online healthcare rules."


The northern port city of Tianjinโ€™s Xiangluowan district has a 1.59-square-kilometer replica of Manhattan, complete with skyscrapers, office towers, hotels, and apartments. The developmentโ€™s low occupancy rate and half-finished high-rises have made it a favorite of media reports about โ€œghost citiesโ€ that epitomize centrally planned debt-fueled excesses of construction. But like many of the ghost cities that make for click-worthy photo essays, the Manhattan clone has been gradually filling up with people, according toย Bloomberg. The Xiangluowan district and the city of Tianjin as a whole โ€” home to 14.7 million people โ€” is just a half-hour bullet train ride from Beijing, and stands to benefit from two of the countryโ€™s biggest economic projects: the One Belt, One Road initiativeย and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration project, known as Jing-Jin-Ji.