Madness? This-is-CHINA!
(twitter.com)
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Welcome to the result of artificial growth and government interference. A lot of these properties were structurally unsafe, built with incredibly cheap materials that make the Soviet built housing blocs look like luxury. Demolishing them now probably saved the lives of people caught in a collapsed building incident later.
I don't know a thing about the situation on the ground, but I have to take issue with 'structurally unsafe'. Safety is relative. A relatively country does not have the resources to fortify buildings against ever more remote risks.
On the other hand, when you're rich, you can afford to minimize such dangers.
Unless the developers ran off with the money and built something with cardboard, I am not sure the buildings are 'unsafe' in any relative sense, let alone 'unsafe' absolutely.
It can kind of be the wild west out there, Tony.
If you look at the Wiki list for structural failures and collapses, note how many of the Chinese ones are "Building owner just randomly added shit to a building" - including, in one case, literally added the second half of the building on top of the first - and it had only been designed for the first half.