LEFT TO ROT
Stadium bigger than Wembley with 100,000 seats left half-finished and surrounded by cranes after club relegated
A FOOTBALL stadium larger than Wembley lies abandoned with cranes still looming over the unfinished stands.
Chinese Super League side Guangzhou Evergrande, now known as Guangzhou FC, wowed fans with ambitious plans for their new arena which could hold a capacity crowd of 100,000.
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The initial design was for a lotus-shaped structure which would have put England’s home ground in northwest London in the shade.
Wembley can hold 90,000 while the biggest stadium in Europe, Barcelona’s Camp Nou, can seat a maximum of 99,354.
However, since work got under way in April 2020, the owners of the club has run into financial trouble.
The Evergrande Group, one of China’s largest property developers, is thought to have debts totalling a massive £220billion.
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It forced the firm to halt construction on the new stadium in Guangzhou.
In November 2021, the incomplete stadium was seized by the Chinese government with plans to sell it to another company or transfer ownership to the state-owned Guangzhou City Construction Investment Group.
The project was ultimately cancelled in mid-2022.
Photographs of the half-finished arena show the stands with part-filled seats and the cranes still in place as there were no builders to man them.
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What had been built of the stadium was set to be auctioned off.
Last December though, the Chinese government was forced to step in and take over the debt-riddled firm's stadium.
Reports suggest Evergrande stands to make a loss of around £143million on the project after giving up the property rights to the land to the government.
With the stadium left abandoned Guangzhou FC has been forced to remain at the multi-purpose Tianhe Stadium, which has been their home ground since 2011, and has a capacity crowd of just over 50,000.
Despite the side being a dominant force in Chinese football over the past decade, lifting eight CSL titles in 11 years, it was regulated from the Super League in 2022 having won just three games in 33 matches.
Evergrande filed for bankruptcy protection in the US in August 2023.
In July this year, it posted a combined loss of £64billion for 2021 and 2022.
The property giant’s troubles though are only the tip of the iceberg as China’s property sector remains in turmoil.
Major developers have failed to complete housing projects, which has triggered protests and mortgage boycotts from homeowners.
There are also fears that problems in the country’s property sector could impact other parts of China’s economy as growth slows.
Since the sector’s debt crisis unfolded in mid-2021, companies accounting for 40 per cent of Chinese home sales have defaulted.
Beijing has recently tried to bolster the real estate sector by cutting mortgage rates, slashing red tape and offering more loans to developers.
Huge apartment blocks have been left eerily quiet as construction stalled and unfinished skyscrapers have even been bulldozed.
The shocking oversupply of housing in China means analysts have estimated an eyewatering 90million people could be housed in the empty properties.
The construction frenzy has also left half-built amusements parks and tourist attractions abandoned for years - and a full-scale replica of the Titanic costing £110million has been sat rusting for six years.
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An amusement park called Wonderland near Beijing has been deserted for more than 20 years after a feud between the local government and farmers over property prices halted construction.
It was promised to be the "largest amusement park in Asia" - but it's now it's a post-apocalyptic maze of overgrown pathways and abandoned castle-like buildings.
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