slideshows of Chinese "ghost cities" have been making the rounds on the internet recently
and Chenggong always seems to be included, full of false information in the caption

business week is no different (see link below), but its caption is particularly egregious.
A) Chenggong was never meant for just Yunnan University, or just universities in general, and
B) There is no way that anyone ever predicted 2.3 million students for Yunnan University. Um yeah....76% of the population of Kunming as Yunnan University students?!

www.businessinsider.com/[...]

yeah, its a ghost town right now.
Glad we have a house in Kunming and our ghost apt in Chenggong. Until we see something really happening down there I wont be spending much time there.
Feel sorry for the students and teachers that are going to have to live there.

BTW it's not just Yunnan University but most of the Universities. Therefore their foreign teachers new digs will be there as well.

The population of Kunming is close to 10 million, so 2 doesn't make up 75% of the population more like 25 %. But I agree 2 million students is a stretch, more like 200,000.

2.3 million students in just one city (Chenggong) would represent about 30-40% of the entire student population that enters university every year in China. Such a number would be unprecedented and something for the guiness book of records.

Indeed, even if such a large number of students were possible in one place, why Chenggong and why Yunnan?!! Wouldn't you think it would make more sense for such a "university city" to be located in Shanghai or another one the economic powerhouses of China, rather than some relative backwater like Yunnan?

Chenggong was designed to accommodate a population of 1 million! Some news reports may be slightly exaggerated.

Last year, it was Zhengzhou's new CBD that was the ghost town making the news. I visited the CBD at the time similar articles came out. It didn't feel like a ghost town; just a new town.

These articles are always over-top. But how else are you going to sell an article full of google satellite images. Plus China changes so fast, not even the maps keep up, much less sat images. And if your writing from a desk in NY...well you got no chance of saying anything relevant.

Well the numbers are ridiculous and inflated, but that happens pretty much anywhere in China when it comes to these sorts of massive urban development projects.

As to why the government would want to relocate university student (and teacher) populations outside of the major political and financial centers of the city?

Think of Beijing, in either June of 1989 or May of 1919, and you start to get the picture. Nicely laid out with straight, wide roads and accurate maps, without many hidden nooks and crannies, and very easy to lock down if something happens (which it probably won't).

It was always a hare brained idea IMO. Universities and their students are sources of life in city centres. Bars, clubs, entertainment venues, shopping and restaurants all benefit from a population of college students being around. Thing is, many of them don't have much money in China so if they're not living amongst regular people you risk a Chenggong without many shops, restaurants and the likes, hence it becomes a boring, near-empty, lifeless area where no one wants to go or live. I kind of hope the provincial government has a plan or 10 ready apart from just building and moving, because it's not going to be enough.

In Shanghai the new university campus of Shanghai Uni was about 40 minutes out of the city. In Zhengzhou the campuses were relocating about 30 minutes outside the city (in fact one campus was a 1 hour bus ride outside the city.) I think a big reason for this is that land is cheap, and the older campuses are starting to fall apart.

When counting student numbers remember the 50% of kids will go to tertiary education and a lot of universities are little more than community colleges here. The students probably did not pass gao kao. This will boost numbers. Local gov. will talk about potential capacity and this can mean, there would be sufficient land to build accommodation for X number of students. Add sloppy journalism and you can get to 2.3 million.

Ref Zhengzhou CBD, yes it was quiet when I lived there, and for the first 2 years it did not really take off. But traffic was growing and so was local business (shops and restaurants) when I left there 2 years ago. Yes the heart of the CBD was quiet after dark, but most CBDs are for the banks etc. 9-5.