At present, there is no mainstream channel for the supply of low-rent housing in China, and many functions of low-cost leased housing are undertaken by informal villages in the city  In recent years, the gap between the urban development of the south and the north is getting wider and wider  In the study of explaining this phenomenon, the proportion of the village in the city to the whole urban built-up area should be a very explanatory variable  In the south, there are many  villages in the city of the semi-illegal , which make the availability of low-cost rentable housing much higher than that in northern cities
It is these low-rent housing that enable  manufacturing with meagre profits to survive in big cities where land prices are expensive
The development of manufacturing industry in southern cities is closely related to the supply of low-rent housing.