Few signs of life in 'China's Manhattan'

Tianjin

AS the wind whistles through half-finished skyscrapers and over empty boulevards, a development billed as China's answer to Manhattan at times bears out the "ghost town" label some have given it.

Chinese officials hope the towers of the Yujiapu Financial District will one day house a trading centre to rival New York's Wall Street or London's Canary Wharf. But more than three years after construction began, all but one of the buildings planned for the development in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin appear unfinished, alongside vacant spaces where others should stand.