Should China spend more on infrastructure?
Such stimulus would be less wasteful than a recession
Rarely can so much have been used by so few. During Shanghai’s long lockdown, which mercifully eased this week, the city’s impressive infrastructure stood in splendid isolation from most of the citizens it is meant to serve. The metro (all 831km of it) was eerily quiet. The two airports, which handled 120m passengers in 2019, operated at 99% below their normal level. The famous mag-lev train neither magnetised nor levitated. Six-lane highways provided an ocean of road space for handfuls of scooters. China is renowned for creating “ghost cities”: new, sparsely populated districts that gradually come to life as people move into them. Shanghai’s lockdown reversed this process, turning a lively metropolis into something undead.
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Red elephants?”
From the June 4th 2022 edition
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