Yeah I followed a link from an Australian news website to here. Well done folks.
Hmmm I found this post really interesting simply because I am a Chinese. So I started doing some research in Chinese. From what I have found in Chinese official reports and posts in various forums, I can definately tell that this place is a military drilling area. Appreantly it was built long time back and has been one of the training base for Beijing Military Division since. It appears every summer a large number of soliders, tanks, artilery and armed vehicles gather in the base for all kinds of drilling activities. It is a multi-functional coordinated training camp.

its almost like you didnt look at the picture...


there is a fence all around, a front and side gate, guard towers, a huge comm tower just behind the main building, nearest residence is miles away, and then, they are in the middle of NOWHERE.

Just to clear one thing, this placed is not the other place named Huangyangtan which is undergoing anti-dessertification. That Huangyangtan has the same chinese name but it's in Heibei province (another province). That can ruleout using a anti-dessert facility as a cover-up.
Dont think the cost of that model is that high, since the labour cost around there is next to nothing. Thus, using the liberation army, means anything could be done will be done.
added info: Huangyangtang supposed to be a state-own experimental farm with 4 acres of land and use US imported irrigating machinaries. It is also one of the vineyards of a chinese winery. By overlaying a vincinity map over it, the houses to the east of the establishment are supposed to be farm houses. The hill to the southwest of the facility is called Fabuzhan in the map. The closest large town to the east which marked Shengli in GE is actually called Yongling.

my first post as well.
apologies if alreadsy posted, but as per the article by British IT news website The Register, the scale model of the landscape at Huangyangtan appears to be identical to a section of the planet at Karakoram mountains (border India and China).
go to:
34 05 55.62N 79 46 19.78 E, and rotate anticlockwise slightly and view from about 1700ft and eye alt of 226 miles to get the same scale. Pretty close match. Note the pits to the NE of the model site in china where they might have dug out fill to make the model

agree with other post that it could be a military training model - despite the abilty of using computer aided mapping etc, nothing beats the real thing in terms of being there and tasting the grit!

charliebouy

Thanks for the report, Delta102. Maybe the news article will bring even more attention to Google Earth, and then Google will make enough money (how, I don't know) that they can add a few more good photos.

That news item is now the most-viewed article at that Sydney newspaper. There's a blog connected to it, a contest to see who can come up with the funniest alternative explanation for the model.

Sydney Morning Herald - Blog

"...some of the images in Google Earth and other commercial satellite imaging apps are actually
quite old (ranging from a month to a year). This is why, according to an American quoted in the
article, some of the images in Google Earth and other commercial satellite imaging apps are
actually quite old (ranging from a month to a year).
This is why, according to an American quoted in the article, "In 1999, during the Bosnian War,
we bombed the Chinese Embassy by mistake because of outdated maps and aerial images." ..."

This made news in Germany today:
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/technologie/0,1518,427936,00.html

So much for this 3D solid-terrain model being the largest in world LOL

( My home province in Canada )

260 Million elevation data points

Cheers
Jeff

thats pretty cool

Here's a post of the area in the map.

Area in the Map