Will ghost cities haunt China? (2)

Dragon city or ghost city

When the Global Times visited Changzhou on July 22, one could see many skyscrapers tower toward the horizon along Wuyi Road, displaying the city's ambition to be a real metropolis.

Zhang Weixin seemed torn when asked about the city's largest and newest property project.

"It's everywhere. As you can see, new property projects are all the way along the streets, there are too many of them so I can't figure out which ones are the newest or the biggest," Zhang said.

But at Injoy Plaza, the biggest shopping mall and apartment complex on Wuyi Road which opened in May 2012, a resident named Wang who moved in last year said only one-third of floor space in her building was occupied.

Wang told the Global Times an easy way to judge whether an apartment is really inhabited or not - by counting the air-conditioning units, indispensable in this hot part of China. There are not many to be seen in big compounds with a dozen buildings, each over 30 floors.

One employee from the Tesco supermarket nearby confirmed with the Global Times that business is not good due to a lack of customers.

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