[tmptmp]

>>Are the same cities hanging around forever (and people complaining about them forever), or is it new stock every year?

I guess, googling "ghost cities in China" may bring out many interesting statistics about this. From the top links you get there one can fairly say that the "ghost cities" are in reality a biggish problem. Of course, we cannot get more complete picture just from these sites, but that is true for any communist regime: they will never allow any independent market study to happen in the first place.