Dive summary:

• China's Broad Group now has begun manufacturing modules that will be assembled—by next April, the very confident company says—into a new holder of the world's-tallest-building title at 2,750 feet, but there are some questions, like where's the money coming from for Sky Tower?
• The ambitious tower that will rise on land about 15 kilometers outside the ring road around Changsha in Hunan province probably will mean $1.47 billion in direct costs for a company that had 2011 revenues of $650 million and that is building the structure in a place where it's not really needed.
• Changsha has 7 million people, but it's not one of China's densely packed cities, and it's unclear who will choose to live in the tower, which will be 83% residential, or who will be able to afford to maintain the apartments in the structure that one critic says will look like a giant stack of trailer homes, with low ceilings, thick walls and not much interaction between the residents and their environment.

From the article:

Broad Group’s dearth of experience in residential real estate and its ultra-speedy, nine-month deadline both [bring] pressure to sell quickly – and if its lack of apparent investors continues, possibly at a loss. ...