A group of researchers have found alleged ghost cities in China using Baidu.

These ghost cities are the result of the continuous building of residential houses to cater for the growing population in China as well as a sudden surge of construction in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2011 and 2012.

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Data belonging to about 770 million internet users were examined during this extensive project. So far more than 50 ghost cities have been located with accuracy. However, most of the locations or exact addresses of these cities have been kept classified from public to protect business in the real estate industry.

This study is the result of combined efforts between researchers from Peking University and Baidu's Big Data Lab. Although the data is not perfect due to the inaccuracy of some information presented by the public, which was used in the study, it is nonetheless the first study of its kind.

The study was lead by Guanghua Chi, Haishan Wu and Yu Liu. The researchers concluded that, aside from the high vacancy rate and dystopian environment, these ghose cities are livable, with some of them being seasonal residences.

Most of these ghose cities are allegedly located eastern part of the country. Baidu was able to create a system to differentiate ghost cities from vacant tourist accomodation. Places that the vacancy rates go down during holidays such as Chinese New Year, Spring Festivals and October Golden Week include Rushan in Shandong province and Ordos in Kangbashi. The researchers came to this conclution after tracking of the population of these cities during the said holidays. Many of these tourist cities are built attractively and some are similar to western cities.

The construction of ghost cities in China is estimated to have consumed more cement that the U.S. did in the 20^th century. The study, which was conducted between September 2014 and April 2015, shows China's extreme residential inflation.

Tagsghost cities, China housing, China Ghose Cities