High above the skyline of Tianjin, China’s seventh-largest city, stands a colossal structure shrouded in silence—Goldin Finance 117.
This 597-meter-tall skyscraper, also known as China 117 Tower, was once envisioned as the crown jewel of a luxurious real estate project.
Today, it holds the less glamorous title of being the world’s tallest abandoned building.
The Grand Vision
Construction of Goldin Finance 117 began in 2008.
The ambitious project was intended to be a beacon of modernity, with 128 floors soaring into the heavens—117 floors dedicated to hotel and commercial space and 11 floors for mechanical and operational services. The plan also featured four underground levels.
Unlike most skyscrapers of similar height, Goldin Finance 117 was designed to be habitable up to its highest point. In this regard, it would have ranked second only to Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.
But fate had other plans.
Goldin Finance 117 in 2024. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The global financial crisis of 2008 brought the first blow, halting construction just two years after it began. The site lay dormant until 2011, when a renewed sense of hope saw cranes and workers return.
By September 2015, after a ceremony celebrating the building’s topping out at 597 meters, construction halted once more. The Chinese stock market bubble had burst, draining the financial lifeblood needed to complete the project.
The once-hopeful giant now stood still, its completion date slipping away into uncertainty.
So, where did it all go wrong?
The project faced challenges from the start.
The developer, Goldin Group, was a newcomer in the Chinese market and lacked the financial backing of the Chinese government, forcing them to self-finance the entire development. This was a risky endeavor, and the 2008 financial crisis added further pressure.
Critics also argued that building such a luxurious project in a second-tier city like Tianjin was flawed from the beginning. The project failed to attract the elite clientele it was intended to impress.
As The B1M succinctly put it, “It was like attempting to build New York’s Hudson Yards on the outskirts of Philadelphia.”
The last hope of completing Goldin Finance 117 seemed to vanish in 2018, leaving the skyscraper abandoned ever since.
Today, Goldin Finance 117 stands not only as the world’s tallest "ghostscraper" but also as a cautionary tale for developers and the Chinese government.
In response to the failure of this project, authorities issued a decree in 2020 to limit the scale and number of skyscrapers being built across the country.
