- Reaction score
- 1,667
SHENZHEN, China — With little more than an architect’s drawing and a sales pitch to go by, Tim Chen paid around $500,000 last month for a small apartment being built above a shopping mall on the outskirts of this southern Chinese metropolis.
“I wanted to grab a larger unit in the first batch that went on sale, but I didn’t grab fast enough,” he said in the lobby of the development’s salesroom, echoing an urgency that has gripped many buyers in recent months.
Even as the broader Chinese economy has slowed and as housing values have slumped across much of China, the Shenzhen juggernaut has barreled ahead. High-tech start-ups replaced the factories that had made the city a pioneering showcase of Chinese-style capitalism. Millions of young people moved here from across the country. Construction is everywhere, with prices of new homes surging.
But the deadly landslide on Sunday in Shenzhen, in which a man-made mountain of dirt and construction debris collapsed, is exposing the weaknesses in China’s rapid growth. Disregard for safety standards and environmental regulations remains common despite growing risks, as demonstrated in the Shenzhen disaster, which buried or toppled dozens of buildings and left scores of people missing.
Read more here. (New York Times)
“I wanted to grab a larger unit in the first batch that went on sale, but I didn’t grab fast enough,” he said in the lobby of the development’s salesroom, echoing an urgency that has gripped many buyers in recent months.
Even as the broader Chinese economy has slowed and as housing values have slumped across much of China, the Shenzhen juggernaut has barreled ahead. High-tech start-ups replaced the factories that had made the city a pioneering showcase of Chinese-style capitalism. Millions of young people moved here from across the country. Construction is everywhere, with prices of new homes surging.
But the deadly landslide on Sunday in Shenzhen, in which a man-made mountain of dirt and construction debris collapsed, is exposing the weaknesses in China’s rapid growth. Disregard for safety standards and environmental regulations remains common despite growing risks, as demonstrated in the Shenzhen disaster, which buried or toppled dozens of buildings and left scores of people missing.
Read more here. (New York Times)
