Hello Steem Blockchain!

Welcome to the Development Zone of the city of Qinhuangdao; located in Hebei province. Qinhuangdao is a small city (by Chinese standards) and is also known as a Tier 3 city. China ranks its cities in terms of "tiers." Tier 1 means that the city is a metropolis with large amounts of business, people and money! Think of cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Tier 2 cities are a step down and don't have the same international presence and foreign investment as their superiors, but are quite sizable and bustling. Cities like Hangzhou, Suzhou and Chengdu. And finally, a Tier 3 city is yet another step below them. The population of Qinhuangdao is only about 3 million people (talk about a "small" city).

Downtown Qinhuangdao

The Chinese government has aspirations of sending most of its rural population to live in cities. Concurrently, cities are developing at a crazy fast pace (seriously!) to keep up and to change China's image from a poor, underdeveloped city, to a world-class force to be reckoned with. Cities around the country are competing with each other to attract investors and business to allow it to thrive. Bigger cities with higher rankings enjoy more benefits and funding from the government.

That is why cities are compelled to develop their infrastructure to support a growing population and access to all amenities a middle and upper class community would like to have. One of the consequences of such endeavors are...

GHOST TOWNS!

How do these places manifest? Well, the simple answer is that developers create massive communities without needing occupants. What is interesting to know is that just because it seems empty, it doesn't mean there aren't any homeowners. Most of the properties are simply owned by investors that are not necessarily interested in living there; they just want to invest in a store of value. When you lack an actual community consisting of families and tenants, you end up in a place that is awfully eerie when you travel there. These places are all around developing cities in China. Incidentally, they are called Development Zones or Kai Fa Qu （开发区）.

A portion of the Development Zone

It's not all bad though. These places are actually quite fascinating! You can see brand new parks, buildings and clean new streets that have barely been trekked upon.

I remember I took some drone shots of this place last year and you can really get an idea of how busy this part of the city is when you can view it from up high!

But I must say, if you think these are failed projects in China... You are wrong!

These projects may seem like there is an oversupply, but that is only at the beginning! Many documentaries have been made and posted online depicting these areas as deserted and vacant but that isn't necessarily true. It's just that the developers are building such large communities before people actually move in, and so in the beginning, there only appears to be a lack of tenants. To my surprise, these places do fill up quite well and eventually they seem like any other part of the city! China seems to be operating under the notion of: "Build it and they will come." While I wish that notion would work for many other aspects of life, they seem to have the right idea on these grounds!

Development Zones are now being filled up. You can see the amount of cars parked in this area

Thanks y'all for reading! I hope I was able to educate some of you out there!

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