Airports Empty Like Ghost Towns Shops Collapse China s Aviation Industry Collapses

China's aviation industry enters a zombie era. Stock prices plunge 90%. Airports empty like ghost towns. Shops collapse. 60 billion dollars vanishes. Evergrande collapses, leaving unfinished buildings everywhere. Millions of families bankrupt on mortgages, no home to return to. Chinese too poor to have kids. Birth rate hits rock bottom globally as death toll surges sharply. Unemployment tsunami hits, streets filled with homeless. Ma Xingui mentally collapses, frenziedly bites Standing Committee members, exposing the scandal of political cliques spanning the party, government and military. 7,000 Hong Kong protesters sent to China. Muay Thai champion warns they could be harvested for their organs. You're watching Decoding China, where we bring you timely analysis and grounded perspectives on today's China. China's aviation industry enters a zombie era. Stock prices plunge 90%. Airports empty like ghost towns. Shops collapse. 60 billion dollars vanishes. Unbelievable. It's noon, peak flight hours. Yet the International Arrivals Hall at Beijing Daxing Airport is so empty, it feels like there's only a single flight. No one seems to be coming to Beijing anymore. The silence is eerie. Security is extremely tight. And there isn't a single person in sight. A blogger named Peter walks through Terminal 3 at Beijing Capital Airport and is stunned by what he sees. Shops on both sides are closed. The tobacco and alcohol section is nearly deserted. And the cosmetics area has shrunk to a small corner. Luxury brands like Boss, Bally, Furla and CK have mostly shut down. Beijing's International Airport, once operating at massive capacity, now feels strangely abandoned. People are shifting to low-cost domestic travel, while Western investment in China continues to decline. Across the country, many international airports now resemble ghost towns. At Terminal 1 of another international airport, a traveler finds himself the only passenger. Aside from him, there is just one security guard. The entire terminal has only two people. No airport staff in sight. Late at night at Shanghai Pudong Airport, there's no need to queue for check-in because it's nearly empty. Most shops are shut. And the few that remain open are deserted. Some even marked as temporarily closed. Business is so bad that duty-free shops and airports are going bankrupt in large numbers. Is no one daring to travel abroad anymore? At Shanghai Pudong Airport, you can only spot around 20 to 30 people in the distance. Everyone can feel it. This year's economy is truly bad. Airports are practically empty. Capital Airports Holdings, CAH, the largest airport group in China, and even globally, manages 34 airports. But only 7 of them handle over 10 million passengers annually, while the rest are small regional airports. The stock price of Beijing Capital Airport has fallen to around $0.2 to $0.23, down nearly 90% from its 2017 peak. Xi Jinping, chairman of Caixin Media Group, posted on social media, I reviewed the stocks of airport companies listed on A-shares and in Hong Kong. The results are disastrous. Capital Airport dropped from $1.8 to $0.22 US dollars. Haikou Meilin Airport in Hainan fell from $6.6 to $0.7 US dollars. China Duty Free dropped from $23 to $4.8 dollars. Shenzhen Baowan Airport fell from $3.05 to $0.4 dollars. Shanghai Airport dropped from $13 to $4 dollars. The entire airport sector is undergoing a valuation collapse. This is a systemic crisis, not an isolated issue. Beijing Capital Airport once handled 100 million passengers in 2019, but has been in continuous decline since 2020. Its 2025 report shows revenue of 5.6 billion yuan, up 2.54%. But a net loss of 630 million yuan. From 2020 to 2025, total cumulative losses reached 11.4 billion yuan, about 1.67 billion US dollars. The main reason is the diversion of passengers to Daxing Airport, while non-aviation revenue, especially duty-free retail, has failed to recover combined with extremely high fixed costs. Coupled with that, the number of foreign tourists is decreasing due to the CCP's harsh security policies. Daxing Airport is a flagship project personally approved by Xi Jinping. Netizens are asking, why build Daxing to divert passengers, only to leave Capital Airport running deficits? Who is responsible? Who will cover the losses? China's aviation industry has suffered nearly 400 billion yuan in losses due to the three years of strict zero-COVID lockdowns. Beijing, as the political center, faced the harshest restrictions. Systemic governance issues have worsened the situation. Extravagant infrastructure investments, massive interest-bearing debt, and ongoing corruption crackdowns on officials. From Li Peiying's execution to subsequent investigations of airport executives. While old airports sit empty, authorities continue aggressively building new ones. The Jinzhouan International Airport in Dalian involves an investment of 51 billion yuan, featuring a 21-square-kilometer artificial island, a 500,000-square-meter terminal, and a planned capacity of 43 million passengers, eventually expanding to 80 million. Meanwhile, the existing Dalian-Zhoushuizi Airport is already underutilized. And the city itself, with a population of just 6 million, is facing decline. Netizens criticize, does a declining city like Dalian really need a 20-square-kilometer airport? The bigger the project, the more officials benefit. This is not an isolated case. Many other airports are expanding despite low traffic. China built over 100 new airports between 2013 and 2023. With total investment exceeding 1.5 trillion yuan, yet the average utilization rate is only 46%, the lowest in the world. More than 60% of airports handle fewer than 3 million passengers annually, while the break-even threshold is 5 million. China's aviation industry has truly entered a zombie era. On the surface, there are grand, impressive infrastructures. But underneath lies emptiness, chronic losses, and massive waste. This is the inevitable result of a development model driven by scale and political priorities over economic efficiency, compounded by the damaging zero-COVID policy and an increasingly hostile international environment. Airports that resemble ghost towns are perhaps the most accurate reflection of China's current economic reality. Evergrande collapses, leaving unfinished buildings everywhere. Millions of families bankrupt on mortgages, no home to return to. The collapse of Evergrande has left behind vast numbers of unfinished housing projects scattered across China, turning once-grand developments into desolate wastelands overgrown with weeds. Homebuyers who purchased Evergrande properties now find themselves beyond tears. Many pushed to the brink, some even losing the will to continue living. In Fuzhou, the Evergrande-Binjiang project, branded a malignant tumor by locals, sprawls across 560 mu of land. Its failure has forced three subway stations to shut down, leaving the entire area nearly abandoned. Construction debris and sewage litter the site. With nothing more than one imposing entrance gate, over 2,000 units were snapped up instantly, raising tens of billions of yuan. Yet after collecting the money, construction barely moved forward. Thousands of families are now saddled with 30-year mortgages for homes that exist only on paper. Xinjiang in Henan province has been mocked as the king of unfinished developments. The Evergrande Jade Lake World Project featured an intricately carved European-style gate that reportedly cost nearly 10 million yuan, about 1.46 million U.S. dollars. It was once a prestige project when Su Jiayin, then China's richest man, returned to his hometown in glory. Today it lies in ruins. Similar tragedies have unfolded nationwide. Hengjian Zijin Bay in Henan, Evergrande Sunshine Peninsula in Shou County, Anhui, and numerous other projects in Guangdong, Hubei, Zhejiang, and beyond. All relied on deceptive advertising and the misappropriation of pre-sale funds before being abandoned. In Guangdong, the largest villa cluster promised 67% green coverage. Yet after selling out, not a single blade of grass could be found. In Hubei, dozens of buildings taller than 100 meters have stood unfinished for years, with more than 5,000 households waiting four to five years without handover. In Shanghai, Hongqiao Evergrande International, spanning 540,000 square meters, halted construction in 2021 and is now overgrown with weeds. In Wuhan, Evergrande Times New City once commanded prices above 9,000 yuan per square meter, about 1,318 U.S. dollars. Today its rebar is rusting and the site is flooded with dirty water. The scale of the disaster is staggering, approximately 1.6 million unfinished homes, directly affecting over 6 million households. Evergrande's total debt reached 2.5 trillion yuan, about 366 billion U.S. dollars, while its registered capital was a mere 3.9 billion yuan, about 571 million U.S. dollars. Xu Jiayin expanded recklessly using a fighting-with-empty-hands model, selling homes on paper, mortgaging to banks, and diverting funds from buyers and contractors. Contractors were owed up to 1.25 trillion yuan, about 183 billion U.S. dollars. Homebuyers suffered even more tragically. Many families exhausted three generations of savings and took on heavy bank loans, only to have no home to live in. Property values have plummeted to roughly one-third of the original price. Units bought at 9,000 to 10,000 yuan per square meter, about 1,318 to 1,464 U.S. dollars, are now worth around 3,000 yuan, about 439 U.S. dollars. Yet mortgage payments must continue in full. Banks pursue debts aggressively, courts prioritize protecting financial institutions, and properties are auctioned off. Meanwhile, when Evergrande owed trillions, Xu Jiayin appeared in court on eight charges, bowed his head, and cooperated strikingly with a simple, I plead guilty, I accept the law. His assets, however, had already been transferred abroad through divorce. What fuels the greatest outrage is Evergrande's dense party organization. 38 party committees, 1,133 party branches, 12,075 party members, achieving 100% coverage. Xu Jiayin himself served as party secretary. Accumulating over 2 trillion yuan, about 293 billion U.S. dollars, in debt would have been nearly impossible without official backing. When Xu fell, those officials were dragged down with him. The government had already collected land transfer fees and taxes in full through decades of aggressive land finance and pre-sale policies, turning the entire country into a giant construction site chasing performance targets. The result is nationwide chaos, with ordinary citizens bearing the full burden. Xu Jiayin once proclaimed that, Everything I and Evergrande have was given by the party, the country, and society, and pledged to repay society and shoulder social responsibility. Where is that responsibility now? His ex-wife fled overseas with the blood and sweat money of tens of millions of families, living a carefree life. Tens of millions of construction workers have seen their lives left unfinished. Who will save them? The collapse of Evergrande is not merely the downfall of one company. It is the tragedy of an entire era, one where ordinary people are pushed into despair, while the perpetrators and the system behind them remain largely untouched. The countless abandoned housing projects across the country stand as living proof of this profound injustice. Chinese too poor to have kids. Birth rate hits, rock bottom globally as death toll surges sharply. Unemployment tsunami hits, streets filled with homeless. According to China's National Bureau of Statistics, the birth rate plunged to just 5.63 births per 1,000 people, with only 7.92 million babies born, a sharp 17% drop from 9.54 million in 2024. The death rate stood at 8.04 per 1,000 people. The total population shrank by 3.39 million compared to the previous year. Of course, the figures released by the CCP have been falsified to downplay the crisis, but they still reveal just how dire the situation has become. With average monthly wages stuck at around 3,000 yuan, supporting a family has become nearly impossible. Industries across the board are stalled, waves of unemployment are exploding, and homeless people are filling the streets everywhere. The greatest threat facing the country today is the collapse in births. Once this trend takes hold, kindergartens begin closing, primary schools shut down, and soon universities will face empty classrooms. However, blaming young people is unfair. They are merely drops of water in a river that has already changed course. Shanghai Children's Hospital, once packed with long queues, now stands eerily empty. The birth rate is so low that children have become a rare sight. In many villages, 42 people died over five years, while fewer than 10 were born. In one town last year, only three babies were born, yet more than 20 elderly residents passed away. The generational chain is truly broken. Young women no longer want to marry, and young men avoid any talk of starting a family. Having a child may be simple, but raising one has become hell. Where is the money supposed to come from for schooling and daily expenses when parents can barely survive on their meager salaries? A 3,000 yuan monthly wage, once joked about in 2010, has become a harsh reality in 2026. Many young people have stopped paying into social insurance, knowing full well that with so few children being born, there will be no money left for their pensions when they retire. The job market this year is devastating. The traditional peak hiring season, Golden March, Silver April, ended in silence. Some applicants submitted nearly 500 resumes with no replies. Factories offering just a few dozen positions saw over 200 desperate candidates show up in one afternoon. Even with 12-hour shifts from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., wages remain insufficient to live on. In one family, three siblings, a 36-year-old college graduate, a 35-year-old vocational graduate, and a 28-year-old master's degree holder, are all unemployed. Years of education have brought them nothing but disappointment. On the surface, streets may still look busy with traffic, but beneath that lies decay. Shops are closing one by one. Commercial areas are becoming deserted. And even foot massage parlors open early to fight desperately for customers. Large factories have relocated to Southeast Asia, while industrial parks hang, for rent, signs everywhere. Ordinary citizens are forced to set up street stalls, selling homegrown vegetables or a few stalks of green onions that customers often return because they're damaged. Many say working a stall all day is harder and earns less than begging. The debt crisis is even more alarming. Over 780 million adults, 67% of the population above 18, are carrying debt, mainly from mortgages, credit cards, and online loans. Between 100 and 300 million people are barely surviving by borrowing from one source to pay another. More than 50 million are in serious default, and over 8.55 million have been blacklisted by courts. This is the so-called soft landing after years of rapid growth. From Guangdong to Shanghai, from cities to villages, people are simply struggling to endure. Some lie idle all day. Others go days without a proper meal. Stores open from morning till night with almost no customers. Whatever business they try, it fails. When the 80s and 90s generations pass away, the population will shrink dramatically. While other countries continue their demographic boom, China is heading in the opposite direction, a deeply dangerous situation for any nation. Soaring housing prices, monopoly capital, unfair income distribution, and unbearable living pressures are unconsciously driving the people toward self-destruction. Without long-term vision and real solutions, the day will come when this vast and fertile land of China has no one left to protect it. By then, it will be too late for regrets. Ma Xingui mentally collapses, frenziedly bites Standing Committee members, exposing the scandal of political cliques spanning the party, government, and military. Shocking news from deep inside Zhongnanhai, CCP Politburo member, Ma Xingui, crushed under relentless political investigation pressure, has completely broken down mentally and is reportedly on the verge of insanity. Not only has he frantically bitten and implicated multiple current and retired Standing Committee members, but he is also suspected of dragging out powerful political cliques linked to military heavyweight Zhang Youxia and former anti-corruption Czar Wang Qishan. The atmosphere in Zhongnanhai is now one of sheer panic, as the nightmare Xi Jinping fears most, a party within the party, is rapidly surfacing. This mad political meat grinder is not only plunging the top leadership into extreme paranoia and mutual suspicion, but is also tearing the entire regime apart at the seams. While higher-ups desperately shift blame downward to save themselves, the long-suffering grassroots cadres have finally reached their limit. A rare and explosive phenomenon has just erupted. On April 21st, the CCP's central mouthpiece, People's Daily, published a commentary titled Excessive Requests for Instructions Must Be Rectified, arrogantly lecturing lower-level officials for constantly asking superiors for guidance, dodging responsibility, and doing nothing. The article smugly attributed this to avoidance, opportunism, dependency, and fear of mistakes. Yet within hours, a WeChat public account, Luolong Jishi, fired back with a blistering rebuttal from a deputy township cadre with 10 years of brutal frontline experience. He wrote without hesitation, People's Daily, take back your rectification knife right now! He gave a damning real-life example. When a polluting factory is reported by citizens, he has zero authority to shut it down, no power to fine it, and no mandate to enforce fixes. All he can do is endlessly beg county authorities for instructions. Without clear orders and support from above, how on earth is he supposed to act? His unusually bold and defiant tone triggered a massive wave of support online. This reveals the paradox within the CCP's power apparatus and the difficulties in resolving issues from the central to local levels. CCP officialdom demands absolute obedience while also forcing initiative. It bans any accidents while desperately demanding achievements. The result? Don't act, and you're still wrong. So the only safe move is to do nothing, and officials are all lying flat once. Meanwhile, at the very top, on April 17, the CPPCC party group held a study session chaired by Wang Huning. After the usual ritual of chanting two establishes and two safeguards, they lavishly praised Xi Jinping's correct performance outlook, but only from his local leadership days. They carefully avoided saying even one word about his record since seizing central power in 2012. Many see this as classic high-level blackening, veiled criticism disguised as flattery. In truth, Xi's flagship projects tell the real story. The Xiongnu area, personally launched by Xi in 2017 as a millennium plan with over 1.5 trillion yuan poured in, has turned into a notorious ghost city, with vacancy rates exceeding 70% in key zones. The Belt and Road Initiative, swallowing over 1 trillion U.S. dollars, has seen more than 60% of projects sink into losses and stands globally condemned as debt-trap diplomacy. These disasters perfectly match the CCP's own definition of incorrect performance outlook. The CCP system is fracturing violently from top to bottom. Power and responsibility are hopelessly misaligned, self-preservation reigns, loyalty is fake, and deep resentment is boiling over. The more Xi centralizes power and intensifies purges, the faster the regime devours itself. A far bigger political hemorrhage is likely just beginning. When a system can no longer protect its own elites and instead drives them into madness and betrayal, the real question is no longer whether it will collapse, but how much longer it can hold on. 7,000 Hong Kong protesters sent to China, Muay Thai champion warns, they could be harvested for their organs. Hong Kong Security Secretary Chris Tang-Ping Keung has officially confirmed that the government is aggressively rolling out a special project aimed at reforming approximately 7,000 people arrested during the 2019 anti-extradition protests but who have never been formally prosecuted. According to official statistics, police arrested more than 10,000 individuals during the 2019 demonstrations. Only around 3,000 were eventually charged, while the remaining 7,000 have been left in prolonged legal limbo for years. Their cases neither dropped nor pursued, leaving criminal records hanging over their heads and severely disrupting their careers and personal lives. Launched one to two years ago, the special project mainly involves organizing group trips to mainland China under the guise of exchange visits. Authorities claim the program helps participants better understand the motherland and strengthens their awareness of national security. Tang stated that government officials would personally accompany anyone worried about safety and even suggested that those who perform well could be rewarded with government internships or opportunities to join the civil service. Human rights lawyers and exiled politicians, however, dismissed these claims, calling the scheme a disguised form of political coercion and brainwashing designed to bypass normal legal procedures. In an exclusive interview with Vision Times, renowned Hong Kong Muay Thai fighter Kui Teng, now living in exile in Toronto, Canada, pulled no punches. With 13 years of experience as a criminal law paralegal in Hong Kong, he declared outright, this special project is nothing but a brainwashing plan. Kui Teng explained the authorities calculated prosecution-by-stages tactic. The most serious cases are brought to trial first, while others are kept on bail indefinitely. Trapped in a state of constant uncertainty and psychological pressure. He stressed that no political prisoner in Hong Kong has ever fully escaped prosecution. He issued a chilling warning about the risks of traveling to the mainland. I completely suspect they could be killed for their organs, Kui Teng stated. Drawing from testimonies of Falun Gong practitioners he met in Canada, he pointed to real cases where arrested individuals disappeared and their families believed their organs were harvested. He also highlighted frequent reports of sexual abuse and gang rapes. If these 7,000 young people are sent to the mainland, it's like sending them straight into the devil's headquarters to be slaughtered, he said angrily. He described the program as a form of political genocide targeting those who resisted. Former Legislative Council President Jiang Jiawei, also in exile in Canada, echoed this harsh assessment, saying the situation has gone far beyond ordinary institutional matters. When a regime keeps thousands of uncharged people in legal limbo for years and uses the threat of prosecution as leverage to demand obedience, cooperation, and even ideological conversion, this is no longer about governance. It is naked totalitarian control, he asserted. He posed a pointed question. Can any order built on suppression be called justice? Only a power that lacks legitimacy fears the free will of the Hong Kong people. Legal scholar and former Beijing lawyer Lai Jianping condemned the project as a clear case of administrative power overriding the judiciary. Thousands of people are being denied open trials, the right to defense, and appeals, forced instead to participate in patriotic activities in exchange for temporary safety. As Hong Kong moves deeper into 2026, the fate of these 7,000 young people remains hanging in the balance. To the authorities, it is reform and integration. To critics like Kui Teng and Jiang Jiawei, it is a life-and-death test of dignity, conscience, and the future of an entire generation. As a devout Christian, Kui Teng made a heartfelt appeal. We may each be small, but we can do one thing. Do not encourage others to step into the devil's land to be slaughtered. Jiang Jiawei added a final warning. History proves that systems built on repression will eventually be overthrown by the oppressed. In the darkest times, he urged Hong Kong people to hold firm to their moral boundaries, reject this brainwashing model, and become the best version of themselves. Your feedback matters. Share your views in the comments. 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