China's problem is two fold afaik: They allowed apartment buildings to be built that aren't up to code or even structurally sound enough to live in and must be demolished because they're completely unsafe, and all of the ones that were up to code were immediately bought up as investments and left empty by real estate speculators. Letting people have homes would kill demand and lower prices of course, can't have that.
Yes in a country of 1 billion people there are dodgy apartments, but then again in my country of 26 million people an estimated 60% of new apartments have flaws, big ones in the middle of Sydney have been deemed unlivable only a few years after being built.
China overbuilds entire cities and everyone mocks them for it, but a few years later those cities fill up and people conveniently forget about that.
Even the commentator who coined the term Ghost Cities admits they have become functional economic powerhouses.
> Reporting in 2018, Shepard noted that "Today, China’s so-called ghost cities that were so prevalently showcased in 2013 and 2014 are no longer global intrigues. They have filled up to the point of being functioning, normal cities"
