When the Chinese government announced its plan to create a new city from scratch in a rural northern backwater of the country on April 1, the effect was immediate.
Housing prices in the area tripled almost overnight as property speculators rushed to the area — about 100km south-west of Beijing — in the hopes of cashing in on the new project, described by state media as a “grand strategy crucial for a millennium to come”.
Share prices for listed companies with even tenuous connections to the “Xiongan New Area” soared as analysts estimated that up to $580bn — roughly the annual gross domestic product of Argentina — would be spent in the next few years on building up the new city, which will eventually cover an area twice the size of Hong Kong and nearly three times the size of New York City. The government is aiming for a population of 2.5m people as soon as 2030.