China Filling 'Ghost City' with Rural Farmers

The centralized economy in China has become well-known for massive construction projects. These include unpopulated “ghost cities” like Kangbashi New Area, a concrete utopia in Ordos City designed to house a million residents. In a move that mirrors last century’s Cultural Revolution policies in reverse, the government is incentivizing farmers to consider leaving the homestead for Kangbashi. “Reeducation” protocols are in place designed to mold them into instant urbanites.

Local government claims this process was always part of the plan for Ordos and China’s many other pre-built cities. Facing a stark contrast between its industrialized, cosmopolitan coast and a poverty-stricken interior, China intends to relocate up to 250 million farmers to places like Kangbashi over the next 20 years. To ease the transition, government workers provide resources to educate residents and ease them into a new lifestyle. These tips range from the practical (how to turn kitchen gas on and off) to the behavioral (don’t litter or drive on the sidewalk).

The city itself is located in a fortunate area of the country: “arguably, Ordos has been able to achieve what it has due to the enormous wealth generated by the coal industry, cheap land to build on, a willing rural populace generally happy to accept large compensation packages, and the lack of an existing urban population.”

The farmers are less sure these grand ambitions will succeed. Lacking urban skill sets, they labor in unskilled positions that cannot sustain a consumer economy on the scale of the cities they inhabit. For now, individual farmers in Kangbashi New Area worry about a lack of work.