Evergrande’s Ocean Flower Island remains half-built and largely empty in Hainan

Ocean Flower Island, a cluster of man-made islets off Hainan built by Evergrande as a $12 billion attempt to mimic Dubai’s Palm, remains partially completed and largely empty and is now under the control of the Danzhou municipal government. The sprawling development includes a mall, a conference center, high-rise apartments, a hotel and dozens of unfinished villas, but many elements sit unused — a mall without shops, a theme park without visitors, artificial beaches said to be too dangerous to swim and 39 nearly finished apartment blocks that were never sold.

Evergrande collapsed under more than $300 billion of debt in 2021 after sinking roughly $12 billion into the project; the company said it needed about $23 billion to finish apartments planned for up to 200,000 people and reported that it had completed and handed over 60,000 units.

The project was driven by Evergrande founder Xu Jiayin, whom the company said sketched designs for an archipelago shaped like a bougainvillea during a 2011 vacation. Xu vanished from public view in 2021, and a report by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate said last March that he had been prosecuted for crimes including financial fraud and disorderly financial management, though it did not report whether he had been convicted or where he was.

Key Topics

Business, Evergrande, Ocean Flower Island, Xu Jiayin, Danzhou, Hainan