A recent statistic was released by the Chinese media and later denied by the power companies.  The statistic was that 65 million electric meters registered zero usage over the last six months.  There have been stories, in both the local and Western media, over the last year or so about all of the unused space, both residential and commercial, in China, as many people discuss the real estate bubble, here.  There are whole towns built in the middle of nowhere with no one to move into the offices or apartments.  Another truth that has made the headlines during that period is that many people buy apartments, not to rent out, but only because they believe that they can make money on an eventual trade.  Some stories even gave estimates of occupancy rates, in major cites, for both commercial and residential space, indicating that there is a lot of space that is unoccupied.  If this current statistic is a true indication of what is unoccupied, it means that there is enough unoccupied space to house 200 million people, or 80% of the population of the USA

Andy Xie, the former head economist of Morgan Stanley, who now writes for Caixin Magazine, wrote an article about the current topic for which we include a link for your further reading: http://english.caing.com/2010-08-03/100166589.html