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Comment by est | Hacker News Reader

> The ghost city of Ordos

Did you know Ordos has higher GDP per captica than HongKong?

Surely. Every single yuan spent on construction -- whether what is being built is useful or not -- gets added to GDP; so, if one takes all the spending in Ordos and divides it by its near-zero population, the number is surely impressive.

The same logic applies to the entire country's GDP, BTW: take out spending on construction, and China's GDP growth looks a lot less impressive.

Ordos has high GDP because it's extremely rich in natural resources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordos_City#Economy

I think it's comparable to Dubai.

Oops, I meant to write, "if one takes all the spending in the ghost city of Ordos and divides it by its near-zero population, the number is surely impressive." The point I was trying to make wasn't about the overall Ordos area, just about its ghost city.

The old city has higher GDP per captica than HongKong. And the city looks like crap. That's why they've built a new one nearby.

This whole divide-by-zero rhetoric is a little silly. A quick google search yielded the following explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangbashi_New_Area

Ordos City itself apparently has close to 2 million people, but there's a fully developed urban housing district designed for 300,000 which has only reached 10% occupancy since 2010.

Only in certain environments does divide by zero == +Infinity.

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