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‘Ghost’ factories could be China’s new growth driver
Building, buying and shipping equipment is a good way to juice numbers while supporting Xi’s national vision for technological independence
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Most glaring is that one cannot easily spot hangars full of idled equipment the way you can track ghost cities by satellite or from a drive through empty streets.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Tim Culpan
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Over the past four decades, Chinese policymakers at the central and local levels have had a handy tool at the ready to boost economic activity when everything else faltered: construction.
Spending money on new apartment blocks, transport infrastructure, energy-generation plants and industrial parks is a convenient way to pump-prime the economy.
