鄂爾多斯

中國新聞網2015.03.10
鄂爾多斯市長答“空城”論：未售房3年左右可消化

    3月8日，十二屆全國人大三次會議在北京人民大會堂舉行第二次全體會議，聽取全國人大常委會委員長張德江關於全國人民代表大會常務委員會工作的報告，聽取全國人大常委會副委員長李建國關於中華人民共和國立法法修正案草案的說明。 中新社發 金碩 攝 

中新社北京3月10日電 (記者 劉旭)“廉市長，鄂爾多斯的房子賣得怎麽樣了？”10日上午的十二屆全國人大三次會議內蒙古代表團全團會議上，有記者向鄂爾多斯市長廉素發問。

聽到記者的問題，廉素略顯無奈，因為每年全國人大會議上，他都會被問到“鬼城”、“空城”、“樓市”的相關問題。廉素當天答時列舉了一連串數據：“去年我回答這個問題的時候說，鄂爾多斯沒有賣出去的房子還有4.5萬套，2014年又賣了1萬多套，大體上接近200萬平方米。現在我們留下來沒有賣完的房子還有3.4萬套。再有3年左右時間就能消化掉，鄂爾多斯的樓市不是問題。”

廉素提醒說，鄂爾多斯的房地產問題已經被“標簽化”，實際上鄂市房產存量並不大。另外，鄂爾多斯的房地產業占經濟發展的比重很小，連3%都不到，所以對鄂爾多斯整體經濟不會有什麽大的影響。

“我希望大家不要再聚焦於鄂爾多斯的樓市，我們現在有新的口號了！”廉素在現場列舉了另外一組數據：

進入“十二五”以來，鄂爾多斯的城市空氣質量優良天數已經連續多年維持在340天以上；鄂爾多斯的沙塵暴天氣已經由上世紀90年代的每年10次左右，減少到現在的每年1到2次；根據國家環保部環境監測中心最新公布的2014年全國190個城市PM2.5年平均值數據，鄂爾多斯的數值僅高於三亞、海口和拉薩。“這個數據可是官方的，鄂爾多斯的空氣質量確實走在全國前列。”

廉素說，數據裏顯示出的成績得益於鄂爾多斯近年來在產業發展結構調整、節能減排和生態建設等方麵所做的工作，“老百姓切身感受到生態環境的改善。”

“天朗氣清，自在養生”，廉素笑著為鄂爾多斯的生態旅遊做起了廣告，歡迎全國人民來旅遊，“冬天到海南島，夏天到鄂爾多斯”。







中國經濟新聞網2014.04.18
從鄂爾多斯房地產困境看城鎮化發展
實地調研發現，鄂爾多斯市房地產困境是諸多深層次原因交織形成的，主要包括房地產供給嚴重過剩、產業結構單一且協調性不高、人口集聚滯後於城鎮規模擴張速度，以及經濟增長的包容性不足等。因此，房地產與城鎮化建設要與產業和人口發展相適應，要有序推進資源型城市轉型，著力提高城鎮化發展的包容性，特別是在城鎮化快速發展階段，引導住房向居住本質回歸尤為重要。

劉衛民 王輝

鄂爾多斯是內蒙古“呼包鄂經濟圈”中的新興城市之一。在煤炭、天然氣、稀土等資源型產業的帶動下，鄂爾多斯的經濟總量規模迅速擴張，城鎮化率不斷提高，房地產也一度成為當地投資熱點。但自2012年以來，鄂爾多斯房地產出現明顯的庫存周轉失速、房價大幅下降、資金運轉等一係列問題。實地調研表明：鄂爾多斯陷入房地產困境既是市場運行規律的客觀反映，也具有其產業結構的特殊原因，更有城鎮化發展路徑的選擇問題，值得其他城市特別是處於城鎮化快速推進階段的新興城市思考和借鑒。

鄂爾多斯2012年進入房地產低迷階段

鄂爾多斯房地產市場經過連續幾年的超常規發展，自2011年開始，有些先行的實物量指標 （如銷售麵積、土地購置麵積等）已經出現回調征兆。在宏觀經濟增長趨緩、煤炭產業下滑以及房地產調控效應逐步顯現等多重因素作用下，自2012年開始，鄂爾多斯房地產市場全麵進入低迷階段。主要反映為幾個方麵：

第一，房地產投資規模大幅下滑。2012年，當地房地產投資完成額為175．3億元，較上年下降58．8％，而商品房施工麵積和新開工麵積，分別較上年下降39．7％和33．9％。在對房地產市場悲觀預期下，開發企業的拿地熱情驟減，土地購置麵積在2011年和2012年連續兩年顯著縮減，2012年土地購置麵積僅為2008年拿地高峰時的1／10左右。企業資金鏈趨緊也使得前期停工項目的開複工速度較為緩慢，甚至影響到部分保障性住房項目建設速度。

第二，房地產銷售受阻，去庫存周期大大加長。2012年商品房銷售麵積232．7萬平方米，相當於2011年曆史高點的43．4％，商品住宅銷售均價下降6．6％（見右圖）。實地調研中，有些開發企業的樓盤去庫存周期甚至加大到5年。

第三，房地產融資能力下降，民間融資風險凸顯。由於當地房地產市場不景氣、開發項目資金回籠不暢，金融機構縮緊了房地產開發貸款規模。2013年上半年，金融機構整個貸款規模同比回落9．1個百分點。另外，當地房地產投資中民間融資規模較大，市場大幅回落導致民間融資收益難以實現、民間借貸風險加劇。

鄂爾多斯“房地產困境”的深層次原因分析

導致鄂爾多斯陷入房地產市場困境的原因是多方麵的。認真客觀分析和總結鄂爾多斯房地產發展麵臨問題的原因，對於提高新型城鎮化的質量，具有重要意義。

（一）供給過剩是導致鄂爾多斯陷入房地產困境的主因

在煤炭行業和房地產市場以及居民收入處於上漲預期階段，鄂爾多斯房地產開發規模出現超常規增長，從而直接帶來後續房地產供給過剩嚴重，這是鄂爾多斯房地產出現大幅波動的主要原因。以2011年的曆史高點為例，鄂爾多斯市人均商品房新開工麵積為12．6平方米，是同期北京人均水平的5．2倍，是同期全國人均水平的4．6倍。繼連續數年新開工量和施工麵積屢創新高，隨之而來的是大量商品房建成投放市場。即使在房地產市場已經出現全麵下行的2012年，當地商品房竣工麵積的增幅仍然接近100％，這無疑對本來脆弱的房地產市場供求關係帶來更大衝擊。截止到2012年，鄂爾多斯市人均住宅使用麵積為38平方米，如果按照1．3的換算係數，人均住宅的建築麵積為49．4平方米，是同期全國平均水平的1．5倍左右。因此，從經濟客觀規律上看，過度寬鬆的供求關係和旺盛的投資投機需求雙重作用，必然最終誘發房地產行業增長失速和市場低迷。

（二）產業結構單一與發展不協調加劇了房地產市場波動

鄂爾多斯城市的超常規發展高度依賴煤炭等資源型產業。近年來，雖著力發展裝備製造、電子信息、氧化鋁等非煤產業以及文化旅遊、金融商貿等服務業，煤炭產業比重有所下降，但“一煤獨大”的特征仍十分明顯。2012年，鄂爾多斯原煤產量6．4億噸，占當年全國總產量的17．5％；煤炭工業完成財政收入378．1億元，實現工業增加值1270億元，分別占財政總收入和規模以上工業增加值的46．1％、62．4％。隨著煤炭產業快速發展，第二產業占GDP比重從2007年的55％提高至2012年的60．5％，第三產業比重則從40．7％降至37％，第二產業對經濟增長的貢獻率超過60％。2012年以來，受煤炭市場需求不景氣影響，鄂爾多斯原煤均價從2011年的峰值435元／噸降至2013年上半年的270元／噸，降幅達38％，2013年上半年煤炭行業利潤同比下降約19％，51家煤礦停產。這導致當年鄂爾多斯主要經濟指標增速持續回落，財政收入同比下降9％，部分企業生產經營困難，社會資金流動性嚴重不足，加劇了房地產市場波動。

（三）人口集聚嚴重滯後於城鎮規模擴張

近年來，鄂爾多斯城鎮化實現了跨越式發展。2006—2012年，全市建成區麵積由138平方公裏擴展到250平方公裏，其中城市核心區建成區由56平方公裏提高到162．6平方公裏，擴張1．9倍，然而由於缺乏相應產業支撐，同期全市常住人口僅增長了32．3％，城市人口集聚嚴重滯後於規模擴張。2012年末，全市常住人口200．4萬人，城鎮化率72％，其中市外流入人口48．3萬人，僅占總人口的24．1％，市區常住人口 （東勝區和康巴什—阿騰席連片區）約80萬人，康巴什新區約7萬人。按照規劃，到2030年市區人口預計達到240萬，其中康阿片區100萬人，從目前產業發展和人口流入規模、趨勢看，實現這一目標的難度較大。

（四）經濟增長的包容性不足製約了有效需求釋放

包容性增長對於社會有效需求的充分釋放至關重要。鄂爾多斯連續多年保持20％以上的經濟增速，2002—2012年，該市GDP增長17．9倍，人均GDP增長11．9倍，而同期人均可支配收入、人均消費支出僅增長5．3倍。“十一五”期間，該市勞動者報酬占地區生產總值的比重逐年下降，從2006年的26．3％降至2010年的19％左右，下降7．3個百分點，遠低於全國平均水平。2012年，該市城鎮單位就業人員22．3萬人，總人口就業率隻有25％左右，明顯低於其城鎮化率和全國平均水平，國有單位和資源型相關產業、金融地產業在崗職工平均工資水平，明顯高於非國有單位和其他行業。這些數據說明，鄂爾多斯經濟增長的包容性不夠，廣大居民通過正規就業渠道分享資源性產業增長成果的機會不足，社會財富分配的公平性、普惠性有待提升，不利於社會需求的充分釋放。

幾點啟示

1．房地產發展與城鎮化建設要與產業發展和人口集聚相適應，不宜過度超前。鄂爾多斯是城鎮化發展的一個典型案例，資源型產業的高速發展是其實現城市規模快速拓展的經濟基礎。然而，從本質上講，城鎮化是人口和經濟社會活動向城市聚集的自然過程，產業發展是基礎，人口集聚是結果，其他的變化都是城鄉人口結構變化的派生產物。超越這一客觀規律，過度超前甚至盲目圈地造城，缺乏充分的產業支撐和實現人口集聚的客觀條件，不僅會造成土地、資金的極大浪費，影響生態環境，也易引發財政金融風險、激化社會矛盾。美國底特律城市破產的教訓就是極好的借鑒。鄂爾多斯必須實現城鎮化發展方式的轉型，更加注重提高城鎮化質量，通過改善城鄉公共服務、增強就業吸納能力、優化人口布局等方式加速人口集聚，實現以業興城、依城聚人。

2．有序推進資源型城市轉型是實現其城鎮化健康發展的重要保障。鄂爾多斯的城鎮化有很強的資源依賴特征，如何跳出“資源詛咒”，避免資源性產業周期波動對城鎮化健康發展的不利影響，實現產業轉型和經濟社會可持續發展是資源型城市麵臨的共性問題。近年來，鄂爾多斯在煤炭深加工、非煤產業和現代服務業發展方麵取得一定成效，但尚未在煤炭產業之外形成強有力的增長點。這既有產業培育周期的原因，也受體製機製因素製約。例如，煤炭資源的利益分享問題、煤電一體化發展問題、電力輸送通道建設問題、清潔能源產業審批問題等，都製約了鄂爾多斯產業更加均衡、可持續的發展。建議製定資源型城市創新發展的政策體係，在實施差異化產業政策、優化財稅分配體製、設立資源型城市發展專項基金、統籌節能減排考核、發展清潔能源等方麵進行積極探索，為資源型城市轉型和可持續發展提供動力，為其城鎮化健康發展注入活力。

3．著力推進包容性城鎮化，有序實現就業吸納和人口集聚。經濟增長和城鎮化的包容性不足，經濟高速成長的成果沒有充分惠及全體居民，城鎮化質量未與水平同步提升，是鄂爾多斯經濟社會發展麵臨的深層次問題。鄂爾多斯應把著力推進包容性發展作為城鎮化工作的重點，要積極創造更多正規就業和體麵勞動機會，打破勞動力市場分割，消除就業歧視，提高就業質量。要統籌城鄉發展，加快推進基本公共服務均等化，逐步形成外來人口與城市居民身份統一、權利一致、地位平等的公共服務體係，實現就業、教育、醫療衛生、住房保障的實際全覆蓋。要努力營造公平公正的經濟社會環境，為中低收入群體提供更多的發展機遇和通道，推進社會權利平等，激發居民和民營部門的創新活力與積極性，提升幸福感、安全感、歸屬感。要完善社會治理機製，加強流動人口服務管理，構建現代城市管理體係，提高治理透明度，引導居民有序參與，促進社會融合。

4．住房是高質量城鎮化的重要支撐，在城鎮化快速發展階段，引導住房向居住本質回歸尤為重要。高質量城鎮化的出發點就是要“以人為本”，住房是廣大居民安居樂業的基礎，確保廣大居民實現居住權是高質量城鎮化的客觀要求。另一方麵，國內外實踐經驗表明，城鎮化快速推進階段往往是住房需求旺盛、房地產市場容易過熱的階段，因此，在這一特殊發展階段，公共政策尤其要強調引導住房向居住本質回歸，適當抑製投資需求，嚴格遏製投機需求，通過信貸、土地、稅收、住房保障等多種政策組合，實現房地產供求基本平衡和市場的平穩運行。

（作者單位分別為：國務院發展研究中心市場經濟研究所、發展戰略和區域經濟研究部）




內蒙基本是靠花錢，借錢來花



鄂爾多斯日報2015.03.12
鄂爾多斯：城鄉遍添綠色 增進民生福祉

去年以來，我市上下以持續改善生態環境為目標，以創建國家森林城市為抓手，集中力量，攻堅克難，不斷強化生態建設力度，重點區域綠化、國家森林城市創建、深化林業改革等都取得了新突破，有力助推了美麗鄂爾多斯和祖國北疆生態安全屏障的建設進程。



2014年，我市計劃完成林業生態建設任務130萬畝,全年共完成林業生態建設麵積149.86萬畝，為年度計劃任務的115%，為自治區下達任務量的136%，位居全區第二位，其中人工造林124.36萬畝，居全區第一。完成補植補播16.05萬畝。

國家林業重點工程。2014年全市共爭取國家林業重點工程建設任務87.85萬畝，較2013年增加8.11萬畝。其中天保工程31萬畝、京津風沙源治理二期工程27.5萬畝、鞏固退耕還林成果23.6萬畝、造林補貼試點5.75萬畝。全年共爭取上級各類資金9億元，同比增加0.66億元，其中國家林業重點工程建設投資1.7億元，天保工程、退耕還林工程等國家直補農牧民林業投資6.2億元，其他林業專項投資1.1億元。

重點區域綠化。我市大力推進以人為核心的城市森林建設，努力讓城市的天更藍、水更清、空氣更清新，營造舒心舒適的宜居環境，真正使生態建設成果惠及廣大市民。按照“點上求精、線上求景、麵上求量”的建設理念，我市將重點區域綠化與經濟建設和城市建設緊密結合，穩步推進並逐步完善“一圈、兩區、三園、四帶、五點”總體布局要求，將重點區域綠化與國家和地方林業生態重點工程緊密結合，不斷加大道路綠化建設和改造升級力度，推進中心城區、城鎮周邊、園區內外、村莊前後、河岸山前、廠礦企業等綠化，加大街頭綠地和社區遊園建設力度。2014年完成重點區域綠化61.31萬畝，截至2014年底，全市森林總麵積達到3364萬畝，森林覆蓋率達到了25.81%。

全民義務植樹。為加快綠化步伐，我市啟動了大規模的義務植樹活動，營造了全民共建森林城市、共享美好生活的濃厚氛圍。目前，義務植樹基地達482個。2014年，全市參加義務植樹活動的適齡公民達到了90.45萬人次（其中機關幹部30.8萬人次），完成義務植樹21.79萬畝，較前一年增加6.23萬畝，栽植各類喬灌木1996萬株，為計劃任務的199.6%，總量位居全區第一位。其中，市直單位和東勝區、康巴什新區機關幹部職工參加義務植樹活動人數達8萬人次，栽植各類苗木165.55萬株，挖坑66.45萬個。全民義務植樹盡責率達到95.15%。

創建國家森林城市。我市全麵實施以林業為主的生態建設戰略，因地製宜，因害設防，封飛造結合，喬灌草搭配，不斷加快城鄉綠化進程。啟動了城市核心區百萬畝防護林、“六區”綠化、碳匯造林、“四個百萬畝”（百萬畝油鬆、樟子鬆、沙棘、山杏）等地方林業重點工程，完成高標準造林620萬畝，形成了國家項目、地方工程雙輪驅動生態建設的良好局麵。經過多年的努力，全市城區綠化覆蓋率達到41.98%，城市重要水源地森林覆蓋率達到74.67%，水岸林木綠化率達到81.31%，道路林木綠化率達到82.44%，創森各項指標均超過國家標準。

興林富民。在生態建設進程中，我市堅持生態建設產業化的發展方向，大力發展林沙產業，通過反彈琵琶、逆向拉動，實現了生態生計兼顧，治沙致富共贏。結合集體林權製度改革，推動宜林地向林沙企業和造林大戶流轉集中，因地製宜發展沙柳、沙棘、山杏、沙地柏等經濟林種，擴大原料林規模，提高基地產出率。圍繞林沙資源的獨特開發價值，大力推進林板、林紙、林飼係列加工和飲品、食品、藥品、保健品、化妝品精深開發，不斷延長產業鏈條，提高產品的附加值。全市共培育規模以上林沙企業21家，形成了年產人造板15萬立方米，杏仁露、沙棘飲料及醬油醋18萬噸，沙棘黃酮、籽油、果粉5萬噸，生物質發電4.8億度的生產規模。積極推行“企業+基地+農戶”、訂單種植等原料林種植模式，優先安排國家項目到原料林基地上，讓農牧民充分享受生態建設帶來的好處，增強參與生態建設的積極性。

林權製度改革。2014年達拉特旗被國家林業局確定為全國集體林業綜合改革試驗示範區；全市集體林權轉讓4.22萬畝，金額1210.36萬元；林權抵押0.81萬畝，抵押貸款5976萬元。全年累計受理林權糾紛72起8.53萬畝，調處43起6.03萬畝，糾錯林權1556宗65.99萬畝，登記變更林權證590本39.31萬畝。開展了林權證到戶專項督查，對存放於蘇木鄉鎮等的林權證進行了督促發放，全年新增林權證發放到位麵積378.14萬畝，發放總麵積達到了5020.13萬畝，到位率87.41%，較2013年提高10.41個百分點。完成了全市26個國有林場專項摸底調研和數據錄入更新工作，申報國有貧困林場扶貧資金項目4個，總投資288.8萬元，啟動了國有林場遠程教育終端站點建設，配發接收設備29套。　（賀晚霞）



鄂爾多斯市網站




互動百科：

據鳳凰網報道：

       在鄂爾多斯，從鐵西區到康巴什新區，到處是這樣觸目驚心的空置樓房以及爛尾樓。樓市高峰時這裏集中了上千家房企“掘金”，現在隻剩下幾家房企在苦苦支撐，靠的是賣現房才能打動買家。

      實踐證明市場“看不見的手”最終比限購等行政手段更具決定性。

      放 鬆限購與限貸的利好席卷全國，可惜在鄂爾多斯卻依然感受不到這股撲麵而來的春風，因2010年樓市泡沫而導致的樓市寒冬還籠罩在鄂爾多斯上空。記者趁“家 天下記者天下行”采訪內蒙古呼和浩特的機會，順道到鄂爾多斯親身感受“鬼城”的氛圍，曾經有數百人的大樓盤如今隻剩下十幾人留守，幾十人的營銷部僅剩下3 名員工駐守；大部分售樓部已人去樓空，僅餘一兩人在現場看著。從鐵西區到康巴什新區，到處是觸目驚心的空置樓房以及爛尾樓。記者隨機在鄂爾多斯街頭“逮 著”居民采訪，幾乎個個都是爛尾樓業主。

      即 使是在距離鄂爾多斯車程3小時的呼和浩特，鄂爾多斯留下的印記都非常明顯，曾經東勝人（鄂爾多斯在內蒙古當地被稱為“東勝”）是呼和浩特一大買家群體，占 據比例達1/4~1/3，可惜2011年煤價下跌後鄂爾多斯經濟崩盤，東勝人已徹底離開呼和浩特樓市，仿如人間蒸發一樣。

      幾乎每個鄂爾多斯人都是“苦主”

      在鄂爾多斯樓市泡沫最嚴重的時候，這裏集中了1000家房企在此“掘金”，現在隻剩下幾家房企在苦苦支撐，靠的是賣現房才能打動買家，甚至一名樓市人士以“沒有買賣就沒有傷害”來形容鄂爾多斯現今的畸形樓市。

      官方：兩三年內消化存量房

      鄂 爾多斯房管局一名官員在今年9月底曾經對媒體表示：“截至2014年9月底，全市待銷售商品住宅494.49萬平方米、3.8萬套。其中，中心城區待銷售 商品住宅471.13萬平方米、3.42萬套。預計兩至三年可以將存量房源逐步消化。與此同時，通過回購房源、企業整合重組、協調信貸支持、包聯推進項目 等多種舉措，推進在建工程收尾完工，大麵積出現"爛尾樓盤"的可能性微乎其微。”事實是否如官員預期這麽樂觀呢？讓我們拭目以待吧。

      民間：個個搖頭“不會再買了”

紐約時報2015.03.06
The Colossal Strangeness of China’s Most Excellent Tourist City
By JODY ROSEN

Ordos, like so many of the country’s hundreds of new towns, is famous for being empty — a symbol, some would say, of the hubris of rampant urbanization. But the few people who live there see it differently.







ORDOS, A MAGICAL LAND in the just north of China, is a dazzling pearl in the world history and culture. That’s what it says — verbatim, in ungrammatical English — on a plaque that greets you as you enter a rotunda in the Ordos Museum. The city of Ordos sits in a coal-rich wilderness of desert and grassland at the southwestern edge of the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. It is not even 15 years old and has a minuscule population compared to most Chinese cities. But those facts have not constrained Ordos’s municipal rhetoric. In the museum’s exhibition devoted to Genghis Khan you are told that when the great warrior traveled through in the early 13th century, he praised Ordos as a paradise, an ideal home for both children and old people, with a natural landscape of unrivaled beauty. Signs welcome visitors to “the famous tourist city,” “the most excellent tourist city” and “the top tourist city in China.” The word Ordos itself is a kind of boast: In Mongolian, it means “many palaces.”

The outside world has come to know Ordos by a different title: as a ghost city. In recent years, Ordos has emerged as the most famous, and most infamous, of China’s overbuilt and underpopulated instant cities — a would-be “Dubai on the Steppe,” designed to accommodate hundreds of thousands of residents but home to comically few. Internet slide shows and international television crews have captured scenes of skyscrapers and statues looming over empty streets, and pundits have seized on Ordos as a metaphor for the hubris and folly of China’s rampant urbanization.



It is true that China is in the throes of a transformation without analogue or precedent. Experts say that in the next two decades, hundreds of millions of rural Chinese will move into hundreds of newly built cities — the biggest building boom, and the largest migration, in human history. Last March, China’s State Council and the Central Committee of the Communist Party released a report, the “National New-Type Urbanization Plan,” announcing the government’s intention to boost the proportion of the nation’s population living in cities to 60 percent by 2020. To meet that goal, China will need to bring 100 million new residents to cities over the next five years. The estimated cost of the plan is $6.8 trillion.



Ordos, in other words, is not exactly unique: Everywhere in China, new cities are springing up and spreading out over recently paved countryside. What makes Ordos a special case are the mineral deposits beneath it. The land surrounding Ordos City sits on one-sixth of China’s coal reserves. In the early 2000s, China began awarding mining rights to private companies, which generated massive tax revenues, swelling municipal coffers. The government poured much of that windfall into the development of a monumental new district, Kangbashi New Area; hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment flowed in, spurring a construction boom on a staggering scale. The cycle that was unleashed is familiar: speculation and debt, boom and bust, a real-estate bubble that burst cataclysmically amid downturns in the volatile coal market.

Today, the real-estate situation in Ordos has turned macabre. Video billboards along the city’s major roadways display mug shots of fugitive developers who have skipped town, fleeing their debts. There are rumors about the dynamiting of buildings in Kangbashi: about owners of unoccupied apartment towers who hope to create value through destruction, reselling freshly cleared land to new investors. To the extent that “the famous tourist city” attracts sightseers, they are the morbidly curious, who pilgrimage to Ordos to experience its eeriness. What they find there, though, may come as a surprise. In the shadows of the deserted construction sites and vacant hotels, there are people. They are the citizens of Ordos — not the inhabitants of a ghost town, but the pioneers of a novel kind of 21st-century urban life.



FOR THE NEWLY ARRIVED visitor, the most shocking thing about Ordos may be its cleanliness. On a mild, overcast day this past autumn, the sleek steel-and-glass terminal at Ejin Horo Airport gave off the gleam of a model kitchen at a high-end department store. The city’s impeccably landscaped roadways were equally pristine. In fact, the first human beings spotted on a taxi ride from the airport into the center of Ordos weren’t pedestrians — there were few of those — but municipal cleaning crews, tidying the sidewalks and broad, multilane thoroughfares. It was an absurdist scene worthy of Ionesco or Beckett: corps of street sweepers pushing brooms on streets that didn’t need to be swept. The closest thing to litter in Ordos is the sand that is now and then whipped up by winds in the surrounding desert and blown into town.

The scale of that town is cartoon-ishly huge. The dimensions of its plazas, the width of its roads, the square footage of its municipal and residential buildings — everything in Ordos seems like it has been attached to a helium pump and inflated to gargantuan size. In Kangbashi, there are dozens of apartment towers and hotels, many reaching 15 stories high, with looping circular drives and sweeping lobbies. The Ordos Museum is a mammoth blob that owes something to Frank Gehry; next door, there’s an enormous library designed to look like books stacked on a shelf. The population of Inner Mongolia is not very Mongolian: There are about four times as many Han Chinese as there are citizens of Mongol extraction. But in Kangbashi, the government has built a kind of Mongolian Disneyland, a city packed with kitsch monuments that evoke the heritage and heroism of life on the steppes. There is a theater shaped like a gigantic yurt; there are streetlamps that take the form of bows and arrows. Everywhere you look, there are horses: murals of Mongol warriors on horseback, a suspension bridge with stanchions in the shape of stallions’ manes. The biggest statue in town shows a pair of massive horses rearing up on their hind legs, each as tall as a small New York tenement building.



Images of this architectural excess, circulated on the Internet, have captured the imagination of the outside world. What these photos omit are the people who inhabit the cityscape. On a blustery afternoon in Kangbashi not long ago, groups of men and women in their teens and early 20s gathered on the steps of the museum and the library, and in the adjacent plaza. Some rode skateboards; a group of kids played basketball on a court just outside the library. The dress code was the same that you see across urban East Asia: lots of brand-name sneakers, hooded sweatshirts and other totems of Western culture. A girl of about 13 arrived on a mountain bike, wearing a baseball cap that read “Chris Brown.” (The R&B star, she explained in English, is her favorite musician.) A little while later, a car came past, blaring slogans and music through a roof-mounted megaphone: a mobile advertisement for Ordos’s newest supermarket. The announcer touted the market’s fresh produce and invoked “Big Big,” a popular nickname for China’s President, Xi Jinping. The soundtrack was the theme music from “Dallas,” the 1980s TV hit.



Nearby, seated outside the library, were a group of five young women, all 19. Two were Mongolian and three were Han Chinese; all of them had come to Ordos from small villages in Inner Mongolia to attend Beijing Normal University, which has opened a Kangbashi branch. “It’s nice here,” said one of the women. “My hometown is a tiny place in the grassland. The people here are more well educated. There’s so much more to do here.” What is there to do in Ordos? “I hang out with my friends. We study at the library. We go to the mall.”

The mall, in this case, is a five-story building that looms over a parking lot in central Kangbashi. It is essentially a big food court, clustered around a central atrium, with dozens of small restaurants serving regional cuisines from all over China, as well as some Western fast food, like ice cream and pizza. That afternoon, the mall’s eateries were crammed. When the sun set, the action shifted to the parking lot, where groups gathered to socialize, and young men sold electronic dance music CDs out of car trunks ringed with LED lights. Later, many of the parking-lot revelers migrated to downtown Kangbashi’s signature evening entertainment: the “fountain show,” a synchronized display of gushing water, flashing lights and bombastic New Age music. It is billed as Asia’s largest such show, and it looks it: The dozens of geysers are arrayed in a vast reflecting pool that stretches the length of three football fields.

IN SHORT, ORDOS is not empty, but it is odd: part windswept frontier outpost, part demented college town, with the vague mirage of another tacky desert colony, Las Vegas, shimmering in the strobe-lit mist of those fountains. It is unclear exactly how many people live in the city; the government is cagey about the question, and the figures they release are unreliable. But close observers of Ordos insist the numbers are on the rise. The filmmakers Adam Smith and Song Ting spent two years shooting “The Land of Many Palaces,” a feature documentary about Ordos and its citizens, which debuted in January. They contend that the population increased markedly during the years that they made the movie, between 2012-14, and estimate that about 100,000 currently live in the city.

That growth is due in large part to old-fashioned Chinese social engineering: an aggressive top-down effort to populate sparsely settled Kangbashi. In 2006, the headquarters of the local government was moved to Kangbashi from the Dongsheng District, 20 miles north; bus service between Kangbashi and Dongsheng was allegedly cut off so that Ordos’s public officials would be forced to take up residence in the new town. Some of the region’s best schools, including a high school, were also relocated to Kangbashi. Today, some vacant apartment buildings have become makeshift dormitories, home to teenage squatters whose parents couldn’t afford to move but wanted their children to attend the new district’s schools.

On the north side of Kangbashi, the result of a different sort of social engineering can be seen. There, a population of largely middle-aged and elderly residents occupy a cluster of high-rise apartment towers that are arranged on a grid of hilly roads. The area is not genteel. There is little in the way of landscaping, and the few shops, set back from the streets in small strip malls, have a grubby, weather-beaten look. But the place does feel like a neighborhood. The residents sit outside the buildings, joking and gossiping. On the narrow sidewalks and in front of the shops, groups gather to play cards and mah-jongg.

These people are new citizens of Kangbashi, but they are not quite arrivistes. Nearly all are former farmers whose lands were purchased by the government, which persuaded them to move to apartment buildings in the new town. A half-century ago, in Mao’s Cultural Revolution, China exiled privileged urban youths “down to the countryside,” forcibly turning city dwellers into rustics. In Ordos today, peasants have been deployed to activate the city that has claimed their old pastoral homesteads.

As you wander around Kangbashi, you catch the surreal flavor of these residents’ transformed lives. One day, I spent a few hours in a place called the Ordos Marriage Celebration Cultural Park — the kitschiest attraction in Kangbashi, which is no small distinction. Billed as “China’s first open topic park integrating culture, arts and recreation aimed to exhibit the ‘Ordos Marriage,’ ” it is a sprawling network of sculpture gardens devoted to the themes of romance and wedlock. Visitors can stroll through the Marriagable Age Square, Love Tree Square and the Chinese Traditional Love Culture Zone. There are gardens devoted to the Chinese and Western zodiacs; there are dozens of statues of hearts. Scattered throughout the garden are a series of grandiose tableaux depicting scenes from a courtship and wedding in the grasslands — hulking statues of Mongols and yurts and, of course, horses.

There are real-life horses in Marriage Celebration Cultural Park, too: a pair of them, hitched to carriages of the fancy old-fashioned gilded sort that the British royal family rides in parades. Visitors can hire the carriages for a romantic spin through the gardens. But on that day, there were no takers. The horses stood stone still in a circular path near the park entrance, looking rather less lively than their sculptural counterparts.

Nearby, a half-dozen carriage drivers sat on benches. They were middle-aged men in their 40s and 50s. All of them were former farmers who now lived in apartment towers on the north side of Kangbashi. No one had shown up looking for a carriage ride that week, they told me. In fact, they’d had just a couple of customers in the past month. “It is the slow season,” said one of the drivers with a shrug. It didn’t matter much: With or without business, the government-run tourist office paid their salaries. Even in the “busy season,” they confessed, their eight-hour-long shifts were mostly spent sitting around and talking.


Economists and urban planners remain divided about whether Ordos will ever populate sufficiently to feel like a “real city.” But the carriage drivers agreed: Urban living was good, and their lot now was far better than it had been when they tilled the hard Inner Mongolian earth. I asked the men where they had lived before moving to their apartments in Kangbashi. One of them, a 56-year-old man named Li Yonh Xiang, spoke up. “I lived here,” he said.

Li had been born and raised just steps from the bench where he was sitting. About half of the 90-acre park had belonged to his family; the government bought the land in 2000. “When we were peasants, we lived according to the weather,” Li said. “Now I live in a heated building with six floors. The city is very nice. There are many cars and buildings, but the air is very clean.”

He said: “Sometimes I miss the old days — the farm, the nature. But it’s easy to picture it the way it was.” He pointed toward the horse-drawn carriages. “Our fields were here. We grew potatoes and corn and other things. Our house” — he nodded toward the park entrance, framed by a garish arch, studded with red and gold hearts — “was right there.” Is Ordos a ghost city? Not exactly. But for some, it’s a city of ghosts.