I mean, from that article:
Despite its seemingly outlandish location, Caojiawan Station’s location is part of an insightful plan that anticipates growth in rapidly modernizing China – so say Chongqing Rail Transit employees.
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
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Even here the 'so say' bit clearly creates the same framing as the title.
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Yep and it's also important to consider the political/economic climate.
The 2010s had most media groups reporting on rapid, ostensibly directionless growth in China. One of the more recognized themes were the "ghost cities", so I imagine this got a lot of attention for its apparent absurdity. I honestly can't remember this one but I must have seen a hundred stories like it.
Remember that western propaganda is always a projection, it was most likely a whataboutism for the real ghost towns in US and Eastern Europe where capitalism hollowed the local communities to the point of drastic population drop.
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Tbf if this was done in America. Nothing would happen and we would just have a station in the middle of no where. I wouldn't be surprised if this happened when we did have trains.
and that's what makes this kind of propaganda work because people naturally project their own lived experience onto China
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Yea, we are about to have dozens of abandoned and/or half completed billion dollar data centers around the US.
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Me playing Cities Skylines 🤝 China
look, we took a picture on a construction site and the construction was gasp only partly completed
A more neutral title could have been something like:"Urban Expansion Project Set to House x Million on Track to be Completed Ahead of Time". And instead of literally framing a picture in the most unflattering way possible, they could have shown a 3d model with a birds eye view of the city planning, and maybe workers who are involved like the architect explaining it.
Moving to China, bye.
I haven't been to Chongqing since 2014. I bet it changed massively if I went back.
You look around and think "damn, this place is chonky"
I remember seeing this circulated on reddit as proof that China was on the brink of collapse.
There was a 60 Minutes over a decade ago about the economic collapse awaiting China. It showed large apartment buildings and massive freeways that were underutilized, with foreboding narration saying that it was a sign of corruption among real estate developers or officials or something. In light of the 2008 collapse I think it was projection and coping about the continual failures of neoliberal capitalism, and reflective of the common western worldview that sees China as a scheming villain.
3 years with that much difference is pretty incredible I gotta say.
For contrast, where I live there's an LRT line that's been under construction for over a decade...
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Unfortunately still not the best planning, the station drops people off besides what seems like an arterial road.
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