Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

by Evan Osnos

For those inclined to find reminders of eighties-era Japan—its loose credit and its ice cubes chipped from the Arctic—the moment arrived in July, when developers in the Chinese city of Changsha broke ground for the world’s tallest building, Sky City. Economists point to a historic correlation between “world’s tallest” debuts and economic slowdowns. There is no cause and effect, but such projects are a sign of easy credit, excessive optimism, and inflated land prices—a pattern that dates to the world’s first skyscraper, the Equitable Life Building. Built in New York at the height of the Gilded Age, it was completed in 1873, the start of a five-year slump that became known as the Long Depression, and the pattern repeated in decades to follow. Skyscraper magazine, a Shanghai publication that treated tall buildings like celebrities, reported in 2012 that China would finish a new skyscraper every five days for the next three years; China was home to 40 percent of the skyscrapers under construction in the world.