Bill Gates Just Blew Our Minds In A Single Tweet

Bill Gates Just Blew Our Minds In A Single Tweet
A photo taken on August 18, 2012 shows ongoing construction in the inner Mongolian city of Ordos. Miss China won the coveted title of Miss World on August 18, triumphing on home soil during a glitzy final held in a mining city on the edge of the Gobi desert. The city has grown rich over the past decade on the back of a coal mining boom that has transformed it from a sandstorm-afflicted backwater into one of the wealthiest places in China. The boom triggered a frenzy of building in the city, but the local government has struggled to fill the vast tower blocks that sprung up, earning it the title of China's biggest ghost town. AFP PHOTO / Ed Jones (Photo credit should read Ed Jones/AFP/GettyImages)
A photo taken on August 18, 2012 shows ongoing construction in the inner Mongolian city of Ordos. Miss China won the coveted title of Miss World on August 18, triumphing on home soil during a glitzy final held in a mining city on the edge of the Gobi desert. The city has grown rich over the past decade on the back of a coal mining boom that has transformed it from a sandstorm-afflicted backwater into one of the wealthiest places in China. The boom triggered a frenzy of building in the city, but the local government has struggled to fill the vast tower blocks that sprung up, earning it the title of China's biggest ghost town. AFP PHOTO / Ed Jones (Photo credit should read Ed Jones/AFP/GettyImages)

For the past several years, China has been building stuff at a mind-blowing pace. Just how mind-blowing? Here, let's let Bill Gates put it in perspective:

Think about this for a second. Between 1901 and 2000, the U.S. built an entire interstate highway system, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam and just about all of its skyscrapers -- to name just a few concrete-intensive things. China did all that, and almost half again, in just three years.

On his blog, Gates suggested that all of this concrete had helped pull Chinese out of poverty. But all of this building has also left China with a huge and dangerous property bubble, massive ghost cities and empty housing.

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