From ‘Ghost Tower' to ‘Hotel of Doom': Asia's abandoned skyscrapers
Asia housing and property Published: 2:32pm, 17 Feb 2025 Updated: 2:33pm, 17 Feb 2025
Towering skyscrapers often create a city's iconic skyline, yet sometimes its tallest buildings can fall into disrepair or remain unfinished.
While abandoned structures can become symbolic of a location's financial or social struggles, cities still have to decide what to do with them. Some are left to rust, others are demolished – and a few become revitalised.
'A lot of these buildings can still have a lot of life left in them,' said Shawn Ursini, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat's senior building database manager. 'We just maybe need to get a bit more creative as to what their purpose is going forward.'
Here are some of the skyscrapers around Asia that now sit empty or uncompleted – and how they ended up that way. Unattached toilets sit in an open room in the empty Sathorn Unique building in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2017. Photo: AP Sathorn Unique, Bangkok Popularly known as Thailand 's 'Ghost Tower', this looming structure dates back to 1990. The 47-floor building was only 80 per cent finished when the 1997 Asian financial crisis hit.
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Asia Times
a day ago
- Asia Times
When Trump and Albanese talk defense
Ahead of a prospective meeting between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump at the G7 Summit Canada, two key developments have bumped defense issues to the top of the alliance agenda. First, in a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles late last month, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth urged Australia to boost defense spending to 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP). This elicited a stern response from Albanese that 'Australia should decide what we spend on Australia's defense.' Then, this week, news emerged that the Pentagon is conducting a review of the AUKUS deal to ensure it aligns with Trump's 'America First' agenda. Speculation is rife as to the reasons for the review. Some contend it's a classic Trump 'shakedown' to force Australia to pay more for its submarines, while others say it's a normal move for any new US administration. The reality is somewhere in between. Trump may well see an opportunity to 'own' the AUKUS deal negotiated by his predecessor, Joe Biden, by seeking to extract a 'better deal' from Australia. But while support for AUKUS across the US system is strong, the review also reflects long-standing and bipartisan concerns in the US over the deal. These include, among other things, Australia's functional and fiscal capacity to take charge of its own nuclear-powered submarines once they are built. So, why have these issues come up now, just before Albanese's first face-to-face meeting with Trump? To understand this, it's important to place both issues in a wider context. We need to consider the Trump administration's overall approach to alliances, as well as whether Australia's defense budget matches our strategy. Senior Pentagon figures noted months ago that defense spending was their 'main concern' with Australia in an otherwise 'excellent' relationship. But such concerns are not exclusive to Australia. Rather, they speak to Trump's broader approach to alliances worldwide – he wants US allies in Europe and Asia to share more of the burden, as well. Trump's team sees defense spending (calculated as a percentage of GDP) as a basic indicator of an ally's seriousness about both their own national defense and collective security with Washington. As Hegseth noted in testimony before Congress this week, 'we can't want [our allies'] security more than they do.' US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, right, welcomes Australian Deputy Prime Minister and DefenSe Minister Richard Marles, left, before the start of their meeting at the Pentagon in February 2025. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP via The Conversation Initially, the Trump administration's burden-sharing grievances with NATO received the most attention. The government demanded European allies boost spending to 5% of GDP in the interests of what prominent MAGA figures have called 'burden-owning.' Several analysts interpreted these demands as indicative of what will be asked of Asian partners, including Australia. In reality, what Washington wants from European and Indo-Pacific allies differs in small but important ways. In Europe, the Trump administration wants allies to assume near-total responsibility for their own defense to enable the US to focus on bigger strategic priorities. These include border security at home and, importantly, Chinese military power in the Indo-Pacific. By contrast, Trump's early moves on defense policy in Asia have emphasized a degree of cooperation and mutual benefit. The administration has explicitly linked its burden-sharing demands with a willingness to work with its allies – Japan, South Korea, Australia and others – in pursuit of a strategy of collective defense to deter Chinese aggression. This reflects a long-standing recognition in Washington that America needs its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific perhaps more than anywhere else in the world. The reason: to support US forces across the vast Pacific and Indian oceans and to counter China's growing ability to disrupt US military operations across the region. In other words, the US must balance its demands of Indo-Pacific allies with the knowledge that it also needs their help to succeed in Asia. This means the Albanese government can and should engage the Trump administration with confidence on defense matters – including AUKUS. It has a lot to offer America, not just a lot to lose. But a discussion over Australia's defense spending is not simply a matter of alliance management. It also speaks to the genuine challenges Australia faces in matching its strategy with its resources. Albanese is right to say Australia will set its own defense policy based on its needs rather than an arbitrary percentage of GDP determined by Washington. But it's also true Australia's defense budget must match the aspirations and requirements set out in its 2024 National Defense Strategy. This is necessary for our defence posture to be credible. This document paints a sobering picture of the increasingly fraught strategic environment Australia finds itself in. And it outlines an ambitious capability development agenda to allow Australia to do its part to maintain the balance of power in the region, alongside the United States and other partners. But there is growing concern in the Australian policy community that our defence budget is insufficient to meet these goals. For instance, one of the lead authors of Australia's 2023 Defence Strategic Review, Sir Angus Houston, mused last year that in order for AUKUS submarines to be a 'net addition' to the nation's military capability, Australia would need to increase its defence spending to more than 3% of GDP through the 2030s. Otherwise, he warned, AUKUS would 'cannibalize' investments in Australia's surface fleet, long-range strike capabilities, air and missile defence, and other capabilities. There's evidence the Australian government understands this, too. Marles and the minister for defense industry, Pat Conroy, have both said the government is willing to 'have a conversation' about increasing spending, if required to meet Australia's strategic needs. This is all to say that an additional push from Trump on defense spending and burden-sharing – however unpleasantly delivered – would not be out of the ordinary. And it may, in fact, be beneficial for Australia's own deliberations on its defense spending needs. Thomas Corben is research fellow, foreign policy and defense, University of Sydney This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
HKFP
a day ago
- HKFP
Hong Kong Originals: The 85-year-old flask brand that bears witness to rise and fall of city's manufacturing era
As Hong Kong's economic boom faded and manufacturing moved to China, some long-established, family-run companies preserved their traditions as others innovated to survive. In our new series, HKFP documents the craftsmanship and spirit behind the goods that are still proudly 'Made in Hong Kong,' as local firms navigate the US-China trade war. Few guests staying at the Camlux Hotel in Hong Kong would know that a giant glass furnace once lay beneath where they are spending the night. The Kowloon Bay hotel was formerly the factory building of Camel, an 85-year-old local metal kitchenware brand. The company moved into the premises in 1986 and vacated the property in 2013. Four years later, Camel opened a hotel in its place as part of a government revitalisation plan for the industrial district. Speaking to HKFP at the hotel on Monday, Raymond Leung – Camel's third-generation director – said his grandfather, Leung Tsoo-hing, founded the company Wei Yit Vacuum Flask Manufactory in 1940 after seeing a demand for vacuum flasks. Back then, electricity was a luxury, and few households had fridges and kettles. An insulating container thus emerged as a common household item for keeping drinks hot or cold. 'Being Chinese, being Asian, we drink a lot of hot drinks,' the younger Leung said, adding that his grandfather – who had been exporting vacuum flasks from Hong Kong to Penang, Malaysia – 'wanted to create his own brand of thermal flasks.' The brand name 'Camel' was chosen to reflect the flask's function and the company's resilience. Camel became one of the few manufacturers to make flasks with an inner glass wall allowing the container better insulation than those with just a metal body, said Leung, 47. Over the years, Camel has sold vacuum flasks, coffee tumblers, water bottles, food jars and more, discontinuing some products and launching others as consumers' preferences shifted alongside the changing times. Its products are not only available at shops and department stores in Hong Kong but are also sold in Southeast Asia. Camel is the only vacuum flask brand still being manufactured in Hong Kong, Leung told HKFP. Throughout its 80-plus-year history, Camel has gone through landmark moments in Hong Kong's history, including the Japanese invasion during World War II, which halted its production, and the post-war manufacturing boom. When Leung's grandfather created the first vacuum flask prototype in the 1940s, its parts – from the glass walls to the rubber connecting pieces – were sourced in Hong Kong. Today, like many of the city's homegrown brands, part of Camel's production takes place across the border in mainland China – a move that is neither new nor avoidable, the director said. Former manufacturing hub Hong Kong saw its manufacturing heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s, with factories – concentrated in areas such as Sham Shui Po, Mong Kok, Kowloon City and Western – producing everything from clothes and toys to watches and electronics. Its rise as an export-oriented economy came amid World War II's destruction of industrial bases in Europe and America. Hong Kong seized the opportunity, resuming production and supplying goods to the world. The director's father, Philip Leung, studied engineering in the UK and later completed a postgraduate degree in glass technology. He returned to the city in the 1960s, when he was in his late 20s, to help with the family business. 'He wanted to bring back the knowledge from the Western world,' Raymond Leung said. Under Philip Leung's leadership, Camel ramped up its manufacturing, expanding its production of metal flasks, ice buckets, and plate covers to supply hotels around the world. In the 1980s and 1990s, Hong Kong's manufacturing industry began losing its edge to mainland China, as the latter modernised under the government's reform policies. Many companies in the city relocated their production across the border, attracted by cheaper labour and other costs, but the Leungs stayed put. While minor parts were sourced from mainland China, Camel products' main components were always made in-house. But over the decades, it became clear that it would not last. In 2006, Camel turned off its glass furnace, which was operating on the third floor of what is now the Camlux Hotel, for good. The company was unable to find enough people to operate the furnace after some of its workers passed away. 'Because it's a furnace, you can't turn it off. It has to run 24 hours, otherwise the glass will solidify,' Raymond Leung said. 'We didn't have enough people to fill a day's shifts.' 'It would've been a natural end to Camel, but we discussed it as a family, and my father wanted to persevere,' he added. 'So we had to source the glass from the mainland. [It was] better than just quitting,' he said. The company now checks the glass and all its other raw materials before assembling the products in its factory in Hung Hom. Meanwhile, at Camel's other factory in San Po Kong, workers are in charge of cutting large pieces of metal and moulding plastic. Moving on Leung said Camel's reality was no different from many brands, whether in Hong Kong or abroad. 'Even something like BMW and Mercedes, which are synonymous with Germany, it's very rare you can make a complete product without some kind of [overseas] supplier,' he said. The director, however, says the company still tries to promote Hong Kong 'as much as possible.' Over the past two years, Camel has hosted design competitions inviting the public to submit Hong Kong-themed illustrations. The winning designs were printed onto Camel's signature flasks and added to the company's product collection. Last year's first-place prize went to a red, white and blue design – a nod to the traditional Hong Kong nylon canvas bags – that featured the city's icons, including a pawn shop sign, a cha chaan teng cup, and the city's tram. 'Doing the competitions is a way for us to engage more local talent,' Leung said. People have asked Leung if Camel, with such a long history, would reissue some of its 'nostalgic' products – like the big flasks for households that were common in the past. The director said he 'wasn't completely against' the idea, but he preferred the company to innovate new products instead. In recent years, Camel has launched coffee tumblers and sports water bottles inspired by new trends in the market. 'You can't always go back to your archive,' Leung said. 'You have to move on.' Original reporting on HKFP is backed by our monthly contributors. Almost 1,000 monthly donors make HKFP possible. Each contributes an average of HK$200/month to support our award-winning original reporting, keeping the city's only independent English-language outlet free-to-access for all. Three reasons to join us: 🔎 Transparent & efficient: As a non-profit, we are externally audited each year, publishing our income/outgoings annually, as the city's most transparent news outlet. 🔒 Accurate & accountable: Our reporting is governed by a comprehensive Ethics Code. We are 100% independent, and not answerable to any tycoon, mainland owners or shareholders. Check out our latest Annual Report, and help support press freedom.
HKFP
3 days ago
- HKFP
Australia's Qantas to close budget carrier JetStar Asia
Australian airline Qantas said Wednesday it will close its loss-making budget carrier Jetstar Asia, axing 500 Singapore-based jobs. The low-cost subsidiary will cease operations on July 31 as part of a 'strategic restructure', Qantas group chief executive Vanessa Hudson said. Qantas is 'incredibly proud' of the Jetstar Asia team, Hudson said in a statement. 'This is a very tough day for them. Despite their best efforts, we have seen some of Jetstar Asia's supplier costs increase by up to 200 percent, which has materially changed its cost base.' Passengers with cancelled flights on the Singapore-based regional carrier — which flies to 16 Asian destinations — will be offered refunds, Qantas said. Jetstar Asia was expected to make an underlying loss of Aus$35 million (US$23 million) this financial year prior to the closure decision, according to Qantas, which owns 49 percent of the carrier. The Asian regional carrier's 500 staff will be laid off and receive redundancy benefits as well as help finding new jobs, the Australian group said. Jetstar Asia's 13 A320 aircraft will be progressively redeployed to Australia and New Zealand, Qantas said, creating more than 100 local jobs. Shutting the carrier would deliver up to Aus$500 million (US$326 million) for Qantas to support the group's fleet renewal program, it said. Qantas said the decision to shutter Jetstar Asia was taken together with the offshoot's 51-percent shareholder, Westbrook Investments.
