LA Times: Beijing's Olympic building boom becomes a bust

[marmar]

Beijing's Olympic building boom becomes a bust

By Barbara Demick
February 22, 2009


Reporting from Beijing -- "Empty," says Jack Rodman, an expert in distressed real estate, as he points from the window of his 40th-floor office toward a silver-skinned prism rising out of the Beijing skyline.

"Beautiful building, but not a single tenant.

"Completely empty.

"Empty."

So goes the refrain as his finger skips from building to building, each flashier than the next, and few of them more than barely occupied.

Beijing went through a building boom before the 2008 Summer Olympics that filled a staid communist capital with angular architectural feats that grace the covers of glossy design magazines.

Now, six months after the Games ended, the city continues to dazzle by night, with neon and floodlights dancing across the skyline. By day, though, it is obvious that many are "see-through" buildings, to use the term coined during the Texas real estate bust of the 1980s. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-beijing-bust22-2009feb22,0,5564951.story

[Mari333]

1. The average salary in Beijing is less than $6,000 a year

'The average salary in Beijing is less than $6,000 a year' from the article
you build unaffordable buildings with rents no one can pay for, and have workers with no unions working for large multi national corporations for shit pay (many of these corporations are US slave labour bastards), and you get this scenario.
looks like all the big shots are rotting from the top down, even in china.