That is the official excuse, but those malls are crappy, where did the money really go? Bank lends money to SOE, SOE is told by CPC to build, SOE contracts out to some cronies, cronies subcontract out to more cronies, and so on...lots of cuts are taken, and finally something cruddy gets built that isn't useable but it doesn't matter since it isn't needed anyways.

We would be better off paying migrant workers to dig and fill in holes. Then at least you wouldn't have a monstrosity to tear down in a few years.

Tearing down monstrosities doesn't seem all that worse to filling the holes back in to me!

A lot of waste and air pollution. Construction and demolition alone contributed heavily to Beijing's bad air quality.

Compare "paying migrant workers to dig holes" vs. "paying migrant workers to dig and fill in holes". When you do both up front, you won't have to pay to fix things.

Blargh. If you spend a few million on a mall that no one uses, you're doing it wrong. If you measure those millions as part of GDP, you're doing that wrong too.