The world's tallest unoccupied building to resume construction — after a decade-long shutdown
Construction on the Goldin Finance 117 tower in Tianjin is set to resume after 10 years, CNN Style reported.
Progress on the 1,959-foot-tall tower — making it the tallest unoccupied building in the world — stalled after the Chinese stock market crash of 2015. Now, a new construction permit means that this 'ghost tower' can progress towards a projected completion date of 2027.
6 The tower rises 1,959 feet above Tianjin.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
6 China 117 topped out in 2015 before progress ground to a 10-year halt.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
6 The completion of the tower may be a part of a broader push by China to stabilize its fraught real estate market.
CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
Chinese state media announced last week that construction of the 117-story tower, aptly nicknamed 'China 117,' could resume, CNN Style reported.
Daring urban explorers have flocked to the imposing structure over the past decade, chronicling their death-defying climbs in viral videos, including Russian couple Angela Nikolau and Ivan Kuznetsov in 2016.
The skyscraper, which broke ground in 2008, was constructed with a system of 'mega columns' to brace it against strong winds and earthquakes. The impressively lean tower was designed to host three office zones and a five-star hotel on the upper floors, according to architects P&T Group. A diamond-shaped atrium containing a pool and an observation deck will top the building.
6 Four 'mega columns' run up the 117-story tower.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
6 The tower was designed to host three office zones and a five-star hotel on the upper floors, according to the architect.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
Goldin Properties Holdings, the Hong Kong-based real estate developer behind the site, has since gone into liquidation, CNN reported.
The edifice was originally destined to be the centerpiece of a larger, mixed-use development catering to the upper echelons of the northern port city. CNN Style reported that the wider development scheme for attractions like a convention center and a polo club remains uncertain, but the new permit reportedly nods to 'commercial corridors.'
6 The skyscraper stands much taller than its neighbors.
CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
The resumption of construction on both the Goldin Finance 117 Tower and the Chengdu Greenland Tower — a 1,535-foot skyscraper that has been on hold since 2023 — coincides with frequent headlines about China's abandoned skylines and ghost cites.
'The national government has made it clear it wants to stabilize the real estate market,' said Qiao Shitong, a law professor at Duke University School of Law and expert on Chinese real estate, told CNN Style.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Wire
20 minutes ago
- Business Wire
Omdia: China Hyperscalers Commercialize AI Amid Export Restrictions but Modern GPUs Remain Limited
LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--What are the biggest cloud providers in Asia doing to meet the rising demand for AI inference? Omdia's latest research offers an in-depth look at the evolving challenges of AI inference operations, the key trade-offs between throughput, latency, and support for diverse AI models, and the possible solutions. The report provides detailed coverage of companies such as Huawei, Baidu, Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent, NAVER, and SK Telecom Enterprise. It examines which GPUs, AI accelerators, and AI-optimized CPUs these companies offer, their pricing, the stockpile of NVIDIA GPUs, their AI service portfolios, and the current status of their own AI models and custom chip projects. Despite heavy stockpiling of NVIDIA H800 and H20 GPUs during 2024 and early 2025, prior to the imposition of US export controls, these high-performance chips are difficult to find in Chinese cloud services, suggesting they are primarily used for the hyperscalers' own model development projects. Similarly, there are relatively few options that use any of the Chinese AI chip projects; exceptions include Baidu's on-premises cloud products and some Huawei Cloud services, although they remain limited. Chinese hyperscale companies are well advanced in adopting best practices such as decoupled prefill and generation and publish seminal research in fundamental AI; however, the research papers often mention that the training runs are carried out using Western GPUs, with a few notable exceptions. 'The real triumph in Chinese semiconductors has been CPUs rather than accelerators,' says Omdia Principal Analyst and author of the report, Alexander Harrowell. 'Chinese Arm-based CPUs are clearly in production at scale and are usually optimized for parallel workloads in a way like Amazon Web Services' Graviton series. Products such as Alibaba's YiTian 710 offer an economically attractive solution for serving the current generation of small AI models such as Alibaba Qwen3 in the enterprise, where the user base is relatively small and workload diversity is high.' If modern GPUs are required, the strongest offering Omdia found was the GPU-as-a-service product SK Telecom is building in partnership with Lambda Labs. Omdia observed significant interest in moving Chinese workloads outside the great firewall in hopes of accessing modern GPUs and potentially additional training data. Among other important findings, nearly all companies now offer models-as-a-service platforms that enable fine-tuning and other customizations, making this one of the most common ways for enterprises to access AI capabilities. Chinese hyperscalers are especially interested in supporting AI applications at the edge. For example, ByteDance, offers a pre-packaged solution to monitor restaurant kitchens and report whether chefs are wearing their hats. ABOUT OMDIA Omdia, part of Informa TechTarget, Inc. (Nasdaq: TTGT), is a technology research and advisory group. Our deep knowledge of tech markets grounded in real conversations with industry leaders and hundreds of thousands of data points, make our market intelligence our clients' strategic advantage. From R&D to ROI, we identify the greatest opportunities and move the industry forward.
Business Journals
20 minutes ago
- Business Journals
Five things: Ozzy Osbourne, Market Basket, Taste of Eastie
Good morning, Boston. RIP, Ozzy Osbourne. (Scroll down for a look at the controversy around Ozzy in Boston.) Here are the five things you need to know in local business news to start your Wednesday. 1. Covid vaccine-maker BioNTech lays off dozens in Cambridge Germany's BioNTech SE is laying off workers in Cambridge as part of a broader move to make "targeted adjustments to our U.S. organization." GET TO KNOW YOUR CITY Find Local Events Near You Connect with a community of local professionals. Explore All Events 2. Market Basket fires two senior executives Two longtime Market Basket executives who had been put on leave in May with the company's popular CEO were fired yesterday, Grant Welker reports. On the calendar: Join us for a fireside chat and a panel at Biotech's Future: Innovation, AI and our Competitive Edge at the Ritz-Carlton Boston on July 31 3. Veralto makes first investment in VC fund, but not in Mass. For the first time since becoming an independent firm in 2023, Waltham-based Veralto Corp. is joining forces with a venture capital firm to advance water innovation — pouring $23 million in Emerald Technology Ventures' Global Water Fund II, Lucy Maffei reports. 4. Associate lawyer salaries hold steady First-year associate salaries at Boston's largest law firms haven't changed since 2023 — and this fall they'll stay at $225,000, William Hall reports. 5. Consumer sentiment dips in Boston Consumer sentiment in Boston sunk deeper into pessimism territory in the second quarter, with 39% of people surveyed in the Boston metro region saying they expect business conditions to be bad over the next 12 months — up from about 35% in the first quarter, according to the Metropolitan Consumer Sentiment Index, a quarterly index published as part of a partnership between the Business Journal's parent company and Morning Consult. What else you need to know What's going on? Today is our annual CFO of the Year awards, but if you're not one of the 320 people who have already registered, you can still get to know our honorees by reading about them here. The Petri Dish A Cambridge lung disease company has raised $100 million, plus more biotech and pharmaceutical news from Hannah Green. Names and faces Zoo New England has found its next president and CEO: Stephanie Brinley, the current deputy director of Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute Today in history On this day in 1903, the Ford Motor Co. sold its first car, a Model A, for $850. (AP) What's good on WERS-FM Tropicalia, by Beck What I'm reading The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire, by Stephen Kinzer What I'm watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, on Hulu What's hot in Eastie? Good food and a new brewery It's a week for good news if you're a foodie in Eastie. The annual Taste of Eastie event last night was sold out. The food-based fundraiser held at Lewis Wharf was so popular that the MBTA East Boston Ferry ran on extended hours so more attendees could get to and from The Tall Ship. If you're not familiar with the Taste of Eastie, it's a summer celebration of food from East Boston restaurants that takes place at the Tall Ship on the waterfront. You won't find better views of the downtown Boston skyline, and the food in Eastie speaks for itself. And while I'm on the subject, there's even more news in the East Boston restaurant and hospitality scene: Democracy Brewing, which has a taproom in Downtown Crossing, is now open in Eastie's Maverick Square. According to Caught in Eastie, the new location is called Democracy Brewing Eastie and offers outdoor dining at 154 Maverick St. If you haven't been to East Boston lately, there's more to it than an airport and stuck Blue Line trains. As one recent op-ed writer put it, "few places have a richer blend of collaborations, cultural events, and artists than East Boston." You should definitely check it out sometime. PARTING SHOT WBZ looked back at the controversy of Ozzy Osbourne, when the rock legend created a stir in the city of Boston over the possibility of "dead puppies." Subscribe to the Morning Edition or Afternoon Edition for the business news you need to know, all free. Largest Commercial Developers in Massachusetts Total sq. ft. developed in Mass. since Jan. 1, 2020 Rank Prior Rank Firm/Prior rank (*unranked in 2024)/ 1 1 The Davis Companies (Davis) 2 4 Cummings Properties 3 3 BXP View this list
Business Insider
21 minutes ago
- Business Insider
Russia is pouring money into its war machine — but it's still struggling to create new, advanced systems
Russia is spending record amounts on defense. But it's falling behind in building the advanced, modern military it needs for future wars, according to a new report. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered sweeping sanctions that not only damaged its ability to procure advanced technology but also weakened its military-scientific base, wrote Mathieu Boulègue, a consulting fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at London-based Chatham House, in a report published on Monday. "This damage, in turn, affects the rate of military innovation and R&D. More importantly, it determines how the Kremlin will wage war in the future," wrote Boulègue, a specialist in Eurasian security and defense issues. Russia is set to spend 6.3% of its GDP on defense this year — a post-Cold War high. However, the country's military-industrial complex has been "degraded" by trade restrictions and the demands of wartime production, according to Boulègue. "Russia's ability to produce military hardware has been severely impacted, and its ability to innovate and adopt modern military technology constrained as a result of these challenges," he added. With sanctions cutting off access to critical imports, Russia has been left scrambling to replace advanced components with inferior stand-ins. As early as August 2022, Russian state-owned carrier Aeroflot began stripping spare parts from working aircraft due to sanctions-induced supply shortages. In October, Russia filmed its troops using a Soviet howitzer, showing its military stockpiles were under strain. Boulègue assessed that the state of Russia's military-industrial complex is one of regression, not progress. "Russia will likely have to simplify and slow its military production, accept reduced quality of outputs and manage a form of 'innovation stagnation' in its research and development," he wrote, referring to Russia's state armament programme from 2025 to 2034. As a result, Russia's pathway to military innovation is likely to remain incremental — built on small tweaks to old systems rather than genuine breakthroughs. "Innovation generally takes the form of integrating technological solutions directly into proven, older-generation systems — which in turn makes them 'modern,'" Boulègue wrote. Russia's military sector has adopted a "retain-and-adapt" approach because military production is no longer innovation-led. "In other words, Russia 'innovates' through 'smart adaptation' under technical and economical constraints that have a negative, cumulative effect at the tactical level," he added. In the short term, Russia's military-industrial complex will likely keep producing systems that are "good enough" to pose a clear and constant threat to Ukraine, NATO, and the West. But its long-term ability to compete with advanced military powers is eroding. The stresses on Russia's military-industry complex also mean the broader economy is under increasing strain, despite initial signs of wartime growth. "The war economy brings 'good' macroeconomic results, but is causing real-world problems such as increased inflation, decreasing wages and purchasing power, and a liquidity crisis in the banking sector," wrote Boulègue. Russia's economy has shown signs of fatigue recently. Manufacturing activity contracted sharply in June as weak demand and a strong ruble affected exports and jobs. Low oil prices are also hitting the country's all-important oil and gas sector. Meanwhile, a demographic crisis and competition for labor with the military are also hurting the economy in the long and short term.
