A Hong Kong newspaper reports that the mainland is advancing urbanization, local governments strive for rapid development but lack the patience to build a strong industrial foundation, leading some mainland cities to potentially become ghost cities.

　　According to a report on the website of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post on April 21, for example, in Baoding City, Hebei Province, such concerns are deepening. It takes only one hour by high-speed rail from Baoding to Beijing. Earlier news reports said the government is studying whether to relocate some institutions and enterprises from Beijing to surrounding areas, including Tianjin and Hebei. This news stimulated housing prices in Baoding to rise in recent weeks, leading the nation in growth.

　　Li Enping, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Baoding may become another ghost city, but the situation will not be as severe as Ordos in Inner Mongolia or Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province.

　　He worries that some officials in Hebei Province are eager to participate in regional integration development to benefit from it, leading to excessive expansion of some cities.

　　The report says that if Baoding hopes to implement pioneering experimental measures to avoid becoming a ghost city, it does not need to look far for examples worth learning from.

　　Wang Jianjun has been developing the Longhe Industrial Park in Langfang City near Beijing since 2005, serving as the executive deputy director of the park's management committee. Currently, the park has attracted many enterprises to settle in, laying a solid foundation for the construction of this vibrant city.

　　Among the enterprises in the Longhe Industrial Park is logistics facility operator Global Logistic Properties (GLP). One of the park's first investors was Foxconn, a major supplier to Apple. Foxconn entered the Longhe Industrial Park in 2007 and plans to invest approximately US$3.8 billion.

　　The report believes that the emergence of ghost cities in the mainland is mainly due to local governments formulating massive economic growth plans and obtaining funds through land sales. Local governments often designate an area for new town or commercial district development without feasibility studies and careful planning.

　　Wang Jianjun believes that the new urbanization process creates opportunities for business expansion. The mainland's new urbanization plan aims to promote the settlement of about 100 million rural migrants in cities and towns, and to renovate urban shantytowns.

　　Yu Liang, president of real estate developer Vanke, shares the same view. Vanke has maintained a "cautiously optimistic attitude" towards the mainland real estate market since 2008. Yu Liang said at a results briefing early last month that there are many reasons to be bearish on the real estate industry: housing prices in some cities are falling, and others have become ghost cities. But he pointed out that China's urbanization is still progressing rapidly.

　　However, Li Enping worries that despite some improvement, China may repeat the same mistakes in developing remote inland areas over the next decade, causing more ghost cities to appear.

　　His biggest concern is that if China aims to find jobs for migrant workers near their hometowns, factories may move inland, causing pollution.

　　Li Enping said that if even the more developed coastal areas cannot upgrade factories to pollution-free levels, the western regions without geographical advantages will be even less able to refuse polluting factories.