A city for one million residents is very small for China. Most of the time such a place would only be called a village. I lived in another ghost city in China for a few months. Suddenly, over night the city filled up and everyone was told they must work in a certain industry. Previously there was some other small industry (e.g. a shipping company with a few trucks with using the street as a warehouse and local services like a laundry mat). They were all kicked out because they were not the designated industry. The laundry mat re-opened a few weeks later on another street.
People forget that China is a command economy. The government tells you where to live and what to do. If you want to live somewhere else or do something else you need to apply for permission from the government.
Cities like Ordos shouldn't make anyone blink. Once the government knows what it wants to do it will be filled overnight.
Sorry, but you're just 100% wrong. You're describing some version of China from the 1960s, not today.
People in China are not told where to live, or what job to do. The government makes use of various macro-economic tools to steer the economy much more forcefully than in Europe perhaps, and perversely, the market forces (w/ Chinese characteristics!) are also fairly brutal and fast-changing, but people mostly choose their own professions and locations and in many respects, society behaves pretty similarly to the US/Europe.
The system is still the same. You still need government approval as a Chinese to live in another city. There are many free economic zones where you can almost do anything you want. But the underlining system is still the same.
I am in China right now. I lived in a ghost city just last year.
People should write books about that sort of thing. You know how everybody thinks their lives are completely normal and boring, but from the outside, they are filled with strange things? Nobody outside of China has any idea what it is like to live there. Any novel about daily Chinese live should be interesting.
In a similar vein, I remember how weird it sounded to me when an american friend told me in texas there are such big malls that people go there for working out (running) indoors.
There's actually a really interesting book called Mr China by Tim Clissold. It was based about 20 years ago but a real eye opener for what it was/is like to do business there
People forget that China is a command economy. The government tells you where to live and what to do. If you want to live somewhere else or do something else you need to apply for permission from the government.
Cities like Ordos shouldn't make anyone blink. Once the government knows what it wants to do it will be filled overnight.