Kangbashi District

Hia'bagx
康巴什区
ᠬᠢᠶ᠎ᠠ ᠪᠠᠭᠰᠢ
District
Coordinates: 39°36′N 109°47′E / 39.600°N 109.783°E / 39.600; 109.783
Country China
Prefecture-level city Ordos
Time zone China Standard (UTC+8)

Kangbashi District, or Hia'bagx District (Mongolian: ᠬᠢᠶ᠎ᠠ ᠪᠠᠭᠰᠢ, in Mongolian Cyrillic: Хиа багш, kiy-a baγsi; Chinese: 康巴什区; pinyin: Kāngbāshí Qū), is a subdivision of the Chinese city of Ordos, Inner Mongolia, situated in Northern China. It is located southwest of the Dongsheng urban area, the old center of the Ordos Municipality, and spans the border of Dongsheng District and Ejin Horo Banner.

Built with the ample profits from coal leasing which made Ordos the 2nd highest income-per-capita city in China, the new city is in a location that has better water resources than Ordos City itself.[1]

History and construction

With an expanding district due to economic exploitation of the local natural resources, but dwindling water supplies due to the continual expansion of the Ordos Desert, Ordos officials were faced with a local infrastructure planning problem. Hence in 2003, Ordos city officials launched the creation of a new 1 million person city district. Located on a 355-square-kilometre (137 sq mi) site 25 kilometres (16 mi) from the existing city of Dongsheng, the new city is located next to three existing reservoirs on the site of two former villages.[2]

As of 2010, the current city on a site of 35 square kilometres (14 sq mi) has capacity for at least 300,000 people, created with an estimated investment of around 1.1 trillion yuan ($161 billion).[3]

Economy

There is a campus of Beijing Normal University and a municipal library. A five-story shopping mall offers a food court and other shopping. A large "fountain show" provides evening entertainment.[4] Economic activity is gradually picking up with the help of the local government which has relocated its administrative center and high quality high schools here. A documentary has been produced, by outside filmmakers which documents the facilities of the city and its gradual growth.[1]

Apartment and office capacity

Characterized as a "ghost town," Kangbashi was made world-famous by a news report in November 2009 from Al Jazeera,[5] later picked up and expanded through an April 2010 article in Time magazine,[6] for having few residents but massive amounts of empty residential housing and high-tech public works projects. Subsequent reports have supported the claims that Kangbashi housed around 20,000 to 30,000 people as of 2010.[7] A joint Peking University and Baidu study in 2015 found high vacancy rates in parts of Kangbashi.[8]

Documentary film

Between 2012 and 2014, filmmakers Adam James Smith and Song Ting shot a feature documentary film, The Land of Many Palaces, about the city and its citizens. The directors believe that the population increased markedly during the years that they made the movie and estimated in early 2015 that about 100,000 people then lived in the city.[9]

Transportation

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Eli Bildner (April 8, 2013). "Ordos: A Ghost Town That Isn't In this interview, two documentary filmmakers profile the surprising liveliness of Ordos, a Chinese city famous for its emptiness.". TeaLeafNation via Atlantic. Retrieved March 9, 2015. The government has moved its officials into the new town, and they've also moved some of the city's best schools into the new town, to try to bring in young people.
  2. ↑ Hu Yinan (10 June 2010). "Ghost town". China Daily. Retrieved 2010-11-13.
  3. ↑ "China's Desert Ghost City Shows Property `Madness' Persists". Bloomberg News. Jun 23, 2010. Retrieved 2010-11-13.
  4. ↑ Jody Rosen (March 6, 2015). "The Colossal Strangeness of China's Most Excellent Tourist City". The New York Times Travel Magazine. Retrieved March 9, 2015. It’s nice here,” said one of the women. “My hometown is a tiny place in the grassland. The people here are more well educated. There’s so much more to do here.” What is there to do in Ordos? “I hang out with my friends. We study at the library. We go to the mall.
  5. ↑ "China's Ghost Town". Al Jazeera. 10 November 2009. Retrieved 2010-12-21.
  6. ↑ Bill Powell (April 5, 2010). "Inside China's Runaway Building Boom". Time magazine. Retrieved 2010-12-21.
  7. ↑ Robert Peston (11 November 2010). "China: boom or bust?". BBC News. Retrieved 2010-11-13.
  8. ↑ Baidu found China’s “ghost cities,” but it is keeping their locations mostly a secret
  9. ↑ Jody Rosen (March 6, 2015). "The Colossal Strangeness of China's Most Excellent Tourist City". The New York Times Style Magazine. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
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