Sim Chi Yin Ruyi island, off Haikou city, was intended as a tourist destination, with theme parks and hotels. Its planned size is over 7 square kilometres and it is to be linked to the mainland through a 5.6 k
(...) m bridge. In an inspection by the authorities in 2017, the project was found to have reclaimed 210,000 sqm of the sea without proper permits. The land reclamation there which started in 2015 has been stopped because of both the environmental inspection as well as the developer running short of funds. In July 2018, Kaisa, another developer has bought the whole Ruyi Island project from its original developer Zhonghong at 1.4 billion rmb. Florida-based landscape architecture company EDSA is listed as being involved in the project. China. 2018.
| From "Shifting Sands", 2017-on-going. | This project was supported with a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. |
The Dubai of China
In recent years, China’s coastal provinces — which house most of the country’s population — have been reclaiming land at a rapid pace, artificially creating huge tracts of land where seas, mangrove and wetland once were. Among the fastest-urbanising countries in the world, China has no shortage of useable land, but land reclamation has become seen as a quick and cheap way to get “a blank slate” of land to build on. Reclaimed land usually costs between US$310,000 and $670,000 per hectare. If you compare this cost to the average cost of purchasing land (especially for commercial/residential purposes) in a big city, it’s in some locations at least 10 times more expensive to buy land, than to reclaim.
Since 2006, 13,000 hectares of land (32,123 acres) have been reclaimed on average each year, swallowing up beaches, islands and wetlands. Mangroves which protect the coast and migratory birds’ habitats have been wiped out.
Alarmed by this and its impact on the marine ecosystem, China’s government in January and July last year (2018) slapped a ban on commercial land reclamation. © Sim Chi Yin | Magnum Photos