As early as 2009, Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan reported on underoccupied property developments in China, which were subsequently covered by news media over the decades. Many developments initially criticized as "ghost cities" have since become occupied and are now functioning cities.

In 2010, China’s national Housing Utilization Efficiency (HUE) was 84%.

Business Insider criticized Dantu as a ghost city in 2010, describing it as "mostly empty" for at least a decade.

In 2012, much of the newly constructed housing in Chenggong District, the chief zone for the expansion of Kunming, was still unoccupied, leading to reports that it was one of the largest ghost cities in Asia.

In 2013, a subway line to the city center opened in Chenggong.

A 2013 news report by 60 Minutes deemed Zhengdong New Area as a "ghost city," describing it as having "new towers with no residents, desolate condos, and vacant subdivisions uninhabited for miles and miles and miles".

Tianducheng, a town in China designed to resemble Paris, was initially characterized as a "ghost town" in 2013 due to it being "largely uninhabited".

In 2015, photographer Kai Caemmerer observed that cities in China are constructed to a near-complete state before residents are mass introduced, contrasting with the incremental growth seen in U.S. cities.

Wade Shepard criticized the "ghost city" term for focusing too much on short-term results, advocating for a longer-term perspective on these developments.

As of 2015, Ordos Kangbashi had a population of 100,000 people, with 80 percent being full-time residents and the remainder commuting daily from nearby Dongsheng for work.

Circa 2016, Chicago-based photographer Kai Caemmerer investigated and noted that many of these new cities are not expected to be complete or vibrant until 15-20 years after they begin construction.

In 2017, Wade Shepard noted that the "ghost city" label had become increasingly hard to apply to Ordos Kangbashi district as it had since further significantly increased its resident population from 30,000 to 153,000 people living there.

As of 2017, only 100,000 residents lived in Lanzhou New Area, and many buildings remained unoccupied.

By 2017, the population of Tianducheng had increased from approximately 2,000 in 2013 to around 30,000.

In 2018, Wade Shepard noted that China’s so-called ghost cities that were so prevalently showcased in 2013 and 2014 are no longer global intrigues and have filled up to the point of being functioning, normal cities.

From 2013 to 2018, the economy of Zhengdong New Area grew at an annual rate of 25%.

Between 2001 and 2020, China constructed 11.47 billion square meters of urban housing, accounting for nearly half of the world’s new housing stock.

In 2020, China had about 65 million empty homes.

In 2020, China’s national HUE declined to 78%, reflecting a significant increase in underutilized housing.

Construction of Nanhui New City was designed to accommodate 800,000 people after completion in 2020.

In 2020, the construction and operation of unoccupied homes resulted in 28.26 million tons of CO₂ emissions, representing 4.3% of the total carbon footprint of the Chinese residential sector.

In 2020, 0.78 million tons of CO₂ were emitted in Xi’an due to the construction and operation of unused housing, accounting for 10.6% of the city's total residential carbon emissions.

From 2010 to 2020, vacancy rates increased between 10-20% in Shandong Peninsula & Northern Yangtze River Delta.

From 2019 to 2020, the population of Zhengdong New Area grew 27.5%.

As of early 2021, an estimated 17.4% of the housing stock built between 2001 and 2018 in urban China remained vacant.

In 2021, Bloomberg reported that numerous cities including Zhengzhou and Ordos, that had previously been criticized as "ghost cities" in 2010s, have begun to fill up and "stir to life" and become functional cities.

By 2023 the population of Zhengdong New Area reached 1.3 million people.

As of 2023, only 15% of Forest City had been built, and only 1% of its projected population resided there.

In 2023, academic and former UK diplomat Kerry Brown described the idea of Chinese ghost cities as a bandwagon popular in the 2010s which was shown to be a myth.