Ting Lu

Ordos: Boom town to ghost town

In 2009, the year of our first visit to Ordos, China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 9.1 per cent, and it was easy to see why.

We had seen the factories producing for the rest of the world, the Louis Vuitton stores popping up across the country, and even witnessed farmers in the cave dwellings of Gansu with their mobile phones.

However, with Ordos, we witnessed the other side of the coin: local officials in the provinces were hell-bent on boosting their regional GDP - often a criteria for their promotion.

If building a road pumped up GDP, then building a whole city would really propel GDP growth to unknown heights.