Is China Building a Ghost City on Malaysian Islands?

China is known for its hundreds of “ghost cities”—ultra-modern metropolises built for the country’s urbanizing population that have yet to attract many residents. High-rise apartment and office buildings, pavilions, sculptures, and even a man-made lake with music piped in among its surrounding paths sit almost devoid of human activity. The flip side to these eerily hollow cities are frenetic urban centers such as Beijing and Shanghai, where rural to urban migration has caused populations to explode.

Middle-class Chinese unable to afford residential investment properties in these desirable cities have traditionally looked internationally, to places like Vancouver and Sydney. In recent years, those cities, too, have become more expensive, pricing out buyers with smaller nest eggs. Today, in what Bloomberg calls the “world’s biggest real estate frenzy,” middle-class Chinese are buying apartments and homes in lower-priced areas, such as Houston, Orlando, Thailand’s Pattaya Beach (a resort area south of Bangkok), and Malaysia’s Johor Bahru, which sits just north of Singapore in a special economic zone.