The real thing: The genuine Austrian Christuskirche which has been ripped off by the ChineseWe are on a dirt track snaking its way uphill through rice paddies and groves of yellow bamboo. Behind us, spread out across a vast, smoggy plain, are the homes of tens of millions of dirt-poor migrant workers who struggle to earn a living in some of the most polluted cities on the planet: Huizhou, Dongguang, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the clustered sweatshops of southern China. Yet there in front of us, as we turn a final corner through the dust, is an Alpine vision.
A neo-Gothic church rises like a mirage. It is surrounded by the spotless wooden roofs of well-tended chalets, scores of them, a picture-postcard village set beside an artificial lake. Welcome to Hallstatt, the UNESCO-listed Austrian resort. Welcome to Hallstatt, China.
A workman helps recreate the mountain of idyll of Hallstatt, complete with a lake, concert hall and luxury homesNever afraid to ‘borrow’ or imitate, Chinese planners have now designed what might be called the ultimate counterfeit: a settlement copied wholesale for the benefit of wealthy industrialists and located just an hour or so by chauffeur-driven limousine from their grim factories in the smoky distance. News of the plans for a fake version of the idyllic lakeside village generated a mixture of astonishment, amusement and even a little outrage last summer when it was revealed that ‘spies’ from a Chinese developer had been secretly preparing detailed blueprints on furtive European trips, posing as tourists.
Six months later, as the villas near completion and the developers still smart at the controversy, we decided to play the Chinese at their own game by posing as buyers, the first Westerners to set foot inside this new settlement.‘You won’t find anything like this anywhere else,’ the young salesman tells us brightly as we stood looking out across the man-made lake at the resort. It looks a good deal muddier than the sparkling original.
‘This is the only genuinely Austrian town in the whole of China.’
Faking it: China's hallstatt with its replica Austrian church near the smog-shrouded town of Boluo This sudden reversal of fortune might generate a few wry smiles among lovers of the original. But the state of the Chinese property market is no laughing matter; in fact it has caused waves of alarm as the world’s second biggest economy heads for a crisis of confidence.
China is growing at its slowest pace for more than two years and property prices, which have grown fivefold in the past decade, are projected to shrink by as much as one fifth in the next year to 18 months. The price of new homes in China fell for the third consecutive month last December, official statistics show, with annual growth in real-estate investment slowing to its weakest pace for a year.
The half-finished 'Alpine' homes but there are no people to fill themThe property ‘bubble’ is a source of grave anxiety for economists and a potential disaster for China’s newly monied classes, who for years have snapped up luxury homes, often leaving them empty to preserve their treasured ‘brand new’ status, apparently secure in the knowledge their value could only rise.
Families in nearby villages are bemusted by the Austrian scene on their doorstepsource: dailymail
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