Should China spend more on infrastructure?

Rarely can so much have been used by so few. During Shanghai’s long lockdown, which mercifully eased this week, the city’s impressive infrastructure stood in splendid isolation from most of the citizens it is meant to serve. The metro (all 831km of it) was eerily quiet. The two airports, which handled 120m passengers in 2019, operated at 99% below their normal level. The famous mag-lev train neither magnetised nor levitated. Six-lane highways provided an ocean of road space for handfuls of scooters. China is renowned for creating “ghost cities”: new, sparsely populated districts that gradually come to life as people move into them. Shanghai’s lockdown reversed this process, turning a lively metropolis into something undead.

This surreal underuse of existing infrastructure notwithstanding, the government’s best hope for reviving the economy is to add more of it. Much more. Spending on transport, water conservation and renovating old neighbourhoods will be a “strong driving force” for the economy, helping to employ China’s 290m migrant workers, said Li Keqiang, the prime minister, in an emergency teleconference with thousands of local officials on May 25th. The government will also “vigorously” promote 102 “major projects”, listed in the country’s five-year plan, such as flood prevention, ultra-high-voltage power lines and four-lane expressways—including one to a city in Yunnan renamed Shangri-La.