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It's legitimate in that the rich are getting successfully richer, but I do concur that

  1. There is an increasing wage gap that could lead one to believe it's illegitimate
  2. A lot of those riches are coming from both legal and illegal foreign investment
  3. Much of the riches also are coming from increased government corruption.

BUT the Chinese government is allowing for more free market practice that is allowing for a more diverse economy. Verdict is still out I suppose.

I remember something about building empty cities?

That's actually a funny story.

So the Chinese built entire cities that were designed to look European. These cities were meant to create UBER expensive apartments to move the rich out and essentially artificially lower the in-city markets. This failed, because nobody could actually afford them, so there are huge, beautiful European cities in the middle of China that people can't afford to live in. BUT they take their wedding photos there, so that's a plus.

Also, there are other cities that they just put in shit places in an effort to urbanize the country after the fail of the Great Leap Forward. They basically just said "fuck it, we need cities everywhere." but because of their ridiculous HuKou system and the fact that the housing market is still too expensive for anyone, especially the displaced rural Chinese, to move in, so now the cities are abandoned.