HEFEI, May 22  -- A magnificent compound stands in eerie silence. Dust rests on the tightly closed doors of empty booths and grass covers unfinished sections of an expansive market.

This huge shell of a trade center in east China's Anhui Province has, once again, brought the notorious subject of China's "ghost cities" under the spotlight.

Last week, a Beijing Times article reported that the Daxiong Huadong Food and Farm Product Market, which sprawls more than 2,000 mu (133 hectares) in Chuzhou City, had been dropped by developers due to a lack of investment.

Touted as the biggest of its kind, today the failed project, which was launched in 2009 with expected investment of some 2 billion yuan (322.8 million U.S. dollars), displays nothing but an air of desertion.

The bleak complex is divided into four sections. The C section, complete with some 100 booths, was planned as a tea market, but only two booths are open, eking out an existence among the empty rows. Three people, later identified as the owners of a tea booth, were passing the time playing mahjong.

"The owner rented the booth to us free of charge for two years," one said, "but there are barely any customers."

"There used to be more than 100 management staff here, but now there is just one dustman," said another.

An official with the local publicity department told Xinhua that the giant rural market, had failed as it was too remote and transportation links were insufficient to support a complex of this size.

"We are now in negotiations with new investors, and hopefully they will help push the project forward," said another official, who requested anonymity.

Many are at a loss as to why ghost cities continue to crop up, as they were seen as the result of the ambitious urbanization drive of previous years.

Zhu Min, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in April that China's property market had a vacant area of about 1 billion square meters. An IMF report said that there was an oversupply of residential property in small Chinese cities, particularly in the northeast.

GHOST TOWNS

Governments, in the past, had relied too heavily on the real estate sector and large construction projects to boost the local economy.

There are several ghost cities in Yingkou City, in northeast China's Liaoning Province.

Meng, a resident, said one such large complex, called Huahaicheng City, near the train station has remained an "empty palace" since its units were put on the market five years ago.

"You barely see a soul there," Meng said of the deluxe project, which sprawls across more than 100,000 square meters.

Thousand of kilometers away in Fangchenggang City, in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, scores of high rises have shot up in the city center, but most remain empty.

A local taxi driver, from northeast China, told Xinhua that he bought a house in Fangchenggang for investment two years ago, but could not resell it because the market was flooded with property. He later had to work in the city to cover the house loan repayments.

"Even as a taxi driver, business is hard because although the city is big and there are not many people," he said.

Ghost cities are a result of imbalanced growth models set by local governments, said Ding Yuanzhu, a professor with The Chinese Academy of Governance.

"By leasing the land, these governments could quickly obtain large amounts of money, which boosted local economies -- but only in the short term," Ding said.

Ding said local governments could lower vacancy rates by making vacant property more affordable to buyers through subsidies.

Ding said years of break-neck development in the property market has made big expansion "unrealistic", and that government attention should be diverted to other sectors.

"They should lower their reliance on the property market," Ding said. "That is fundamental."