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Evergrande’s four most over-the-top projects sum up the ‘reckless expansion’ by the world’s most indebted property developer
- Troubles haunt some of Evergrande’s lavish and grandiose projects as developer runs out of cash, loses control of developments
- Evergrande was last week ordered to demolish 39 structures at Ocean Flower Island in Hainan, adding to its woes
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China Evergrande is lurching from one crisis to another. From its home delivery snag to ongoing debt repayment troubles, more than US$52 billion of market value has been erased from the slump in its two flagship entities in Hong Kong over the past 12 months.
The group had 1.97 trillion yuan (US$309 billion) of liabilities, making it the nation’s most indebted developer. Chinese government officials have pinned the blame squarely on its “poor management” and “reckless expansion” into an array of unrelated sectors and other pet projects.
The latest order to demolish 39 structures at the Ocean Flower Island, a tourism project in Hainan, has added to a string of lavish misadventures by the developer, or its billionaire founder Hui Ka-yan, in mainland China and Hong Kong.
1. Ocean Flower Island
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Ocean Flower Island, or “Haihua” in Chinese, is an enormous artificial island off the north coast of Danzhou in southern Hainan province. Started in 2012 at a reported reclamation and building cost of 68 billion yuan, the three artificial islands began receiving visitors in late 2020.
The project is the world’s largest man-made tourism island, sprawling over 1,980 acres. At 1.5 times the size of the extravagant Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, the Hainan development was soon dubbed the Dubai of China.
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On December 16 last year, the project was nominated as the “ugliest building” in a ranking organised by Chinese architecture website archcy.com, an annual competition introduced in 2010. The project was judged for destroying marine ecology and flaunting wealth and kitsch cultural tourism project.
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