http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/07/20/what-will-become-of-chinas-ghost-cities/
Because of its rapid economic development, China has constructed several cities that it intends to fill with people and their burgeoning activity. However, the cities often experience a time gap between construction and occupation and use, resulting in a ghost city period. In terms of distinguishing between what is real and what is not, the ghost cities – not only in China but also historically in Soviet Russia and North Korea, the latter two as means of fooling outsiders into a false understanding of prosperity – occupy a physical space in the real world and contain the infrastructure typical of other cities. That said, the ghost cities lack a human population and thus the social and political infrastructure created both formally and informally through interaction. The cities, then, exist in one sense but don’t exist in another: at one point, the cities are real but aren’t real given another point. Blurring the lines between what is real and what is not is the concept of the hyperreal. What does it mean for much of an entire country to be hyperreal? The ramifications of this analysis are far reaching…