China's Manhattan replica is a ghost town

"If you build it, they will come" is a favorite adage of the ambitious everywhere. But it hasn't quite turned out to be true in China, where multiple ghost cities — extravagant GDP-boosting construction projects unwanted by the market, but built anyway by the government — lie empty and dormant.

Some of these projects are truly epic in their scale and vision. As Bloomberg reports, the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin is currently in the process of building a replica of Manhattan.

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John Aziz is the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate editor at Pieria.co.uk. Previously his work has appeared on Business Insider, Zero Hedge, and Noahpinion.