Why Chinese President Xi’s $93B Personal Megacity Remains Empty | WSJ

In partnership with

Voted "Best Whiskey Gift Of The Year" by Men's Gear.

Blind Barrels connects craft spirit lovers with rare craft bottles from across the country through double-blind tasting experiences at home. We’re shining a light on small distilleries & it’s your chance to join us.

Become A Shareholder

Read the Offering information carefully before investing. It contains details of the issuer’s business, risks, charges, expenses, and other information, which should be considered before investing. Obtain a Form C and Offering Memorandum at https://wefunder.com/blind.barrels/

Villages have been flattened to make way for the project. It’s been protected from flood waters that destroyed tens of thousands of homes, and it cost tens of billions of dollars to build. Welcome to Xiongan, the megaproject that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has staked his legacy on.

Located 60 miles outside Beijing, Xiongan is designed to ease pressure on the overcrowded and congested Chinese capital of more than 20 million people. Just seven years ago, all of this was cornfields and swamp. Today, it is a metropolis being built from scratch. With a whopping price tag of $93 billion, the city was conceived as a showcase for China’s technological prowess and as a demonstration of its urban progress to the world.

In less than a decade, thousands of buildings have sprung up—including residential compounds, office complexes, luxury hotels, and one of the city’s most striking symbols, the Xiongan train station. This terminus is one of China’s biggest, covering an area equivalent to 88 football fields and capable of handling more than 100,000 passengers a day. Yet right now, it is deathly silent. Aside from the occasional cleaning worker, distant passerby, or security guard, there isn’t much activity to be seen.

Despite its official completion date of 2035, parts of the city are already finished. The scale and speed of the construction here is truly astonishing; you can feel that no expense has been spared to build what is hoped to become a socialist modern metropolis.

Across the city, signs and billboards display quotes from China’s most powerful leader in decades. The messages urge everyone to persist without giving up—encouraging the use of “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era” to unite hearts and forge spirits. The success of this multi-billion-dollar endeavor is directly linked to Xi’s personal investment in it. So much so that when the deadly floods of 2023 swamped nearby areas, officials insisted that Xiongan be protected. Flood waters were diverted from sparsely populated Xiongan into government-designated flood zones, which resulted in neighboring cities and villages being submerged.

Videos on social media captured people taking to the streets in a rare show of public anger, with many claiming that the floods in their areas were caused by diverted waters rather than heavy rainfall.

The Communist Party hopes that Xiongan will join the ranks of successes like Shenzhen—the technological hub in southern China that came to symbolize China’s transformation starting in the 1980s under former leader Deng Xiaoping. Unlike Shenzhen’s disorderly and sprawling growth, Xiongan is being meticulously planned. There are strict limits on which companies are welcome here, with a particular emphasis on attracting firms in the tech and space sectors. The city also imposes controls on home prices to fend off speculators.

Despite the presence of state-run companies and institutions, people seem less interested in setting up home in Xiongan. State media boasts that 1.2 million people live in the city—a figure that includes residents from surrounding counties, according to urban planning experts. Yet when visited, the newly built areas appeared eerily empty.

Now we’re in a residential-commercial part of Xiongan. The city is notably green and, unlike Beijing, has a lower population density. There’s a cap on building heights, so there aren’t any massive skyscrapers, and there simply aren’t many people around. Local authorities claim that 120,000 people have moved into these new homes over the past seven years; however, many of these residents are locals whose villages were torn down to make way for the city. Several locals have been quite forthright about the inequalities and anger they feel. Many villagers were given compensation after their homes were demolished, but in many cases, the compensation fell short of expectations. While some newcomers have arrived, many appear to work for the companies constructing the city, with construction remaining the primary source of employment in the area.

Experts note that it took over a decade for Shenzhen to be recognized as a successful venture. Whereas Shenzhen grew as China welcomed a flood of Western investment, Xiongan is being built amid challenges like economic slowdown, decoupling from the West, and declining population growth. Nonetheless, authorities project that Xiongan’s population will reach 5 million people in the coming decades.

China experts say that Xi has invested so much of his reputation in Xiongan that he has little choice but to push ahead with the megaproject. However, whether this largely empty construction site will evolve into a shining metropolis of the socialist future or end up as a failed vanity project remains to be seen.