Dateline recently did a story about millions of empty Chinese apartments, malls, and houses being built, with no hope of ever being occupied.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPILhiTJv7E
To keep China's GDP high (it just surpassed the USA), the government keeps building these mega cities.  But the rent is too high for the average Chinese worker to afford.  So while they live in squalor, they continue to build luxurious landmarks for people who don't exist.
It's estimated they have 64 million empty apartments.  Never been lived in.  That's twice the population of Canada!