Replica Of Austrian Town

The Alpine village of the Far East: Chinese build bizarre replica of Austrian town (only problem is, no-one wants to live there)

We are on a dirt track snaking its way uphill through rice paddies and groves of yellow bamboo. Behind us, spread out across a vast, smoggy plain, are the homes of tens of millions of dirt-poor migrant workers who struggle to earn a living in some of the most polluted cities on the planet: Huizhou, Dongguang, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the clustered sweatshops of southern China. Yet there in front of us, as we turn a final corner through the dust, is an Alpine vision. A neo-Gothic church rises like  a mirage. It is surrounded by the spotless wooden roofs of well-tended chalets, scores of them,  a picture-postcard village set beside an artificial lake. Welcome to Hallstatt, the UNESCO-listed Austrian resort. Welcome to Hallstatt, China. Never afraid to ‘borrow’ or  imitate, Chinese planners have now designed what might be called the ultimate counterfeit: a settlement copied wholesale for the benefit of wealthy industrialists and located just an hour or so by chauffeur-driven limousine from their grim factories in the smoky distance. News of the plans for a fake version of the idyllic lakeside village generated a mixture of astonishment, amusement and even a little outrage last summer when it was revealed that ‘spies’ from a Chinese developer had been secretly preparing detailed blueprints on furtive European trips, posing as tourists. Six months later, as the villas near completion and the developers still smart at the controversy, we decided to play the Chinese  at their own game by posing as buyers, the first Westerners to set foot inside this new settlement. ‘You won’t find anything like this anywhere else,’ the young salesman tells us brightly as we stood looking out across the man-made lake at the resort. It looks  a good deal muddier than the sparkling original.‘This is the only genuinely Austrian town in the whole of China.’No expense has been spared. The original buildings have been copied and reproduced with  startling precision.Horse-drawn carriages and flocks of white doves will be imported to lend authenticity. The prices are amazing, too: a new villa here built in the style  of a 300-year-old lakeside home is being offered at between £200,000 and £500,000, higher than the real thing in Austria.There is, however, a flaw in this otherwise impressive feat of construction: no one is buying.China’s real-estate market, booming as recently as last summer, has gone into freefall. For the moment at least, Hallstatt, Austria, will keep the prize for visitor numbers.This sudden reversal of fortune might generate a few wry smiles among lovers of the original.  But the state of the Chinese  property market is no laughing matter; in fact it has caused waves of alarm as the world’s second biggest economy heads for a crisis of confidence.China is growing at its slowest pace for more than two years and property prices, which have grown fivefold in the past decade, are projected to shrink by  as much as one fifth in the next year to 18 months. The price of new homes in China fell for the third consecutive month last December, official statistics show, with annual growth in real-estate investment slowing to its weakest pace for a year.

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