@@davidgmaloof originally rural villages that did farming but as Chinese cities expanded rapidly in all directions in the past 40 years , those nearby and outlying villages were swallowed by the city builts and they became "islands" inside the city (known as urban villages), kinda like ghetto in western cities. The former farmers built 7-storey private houses in highly compacted manner (for the maximum exploitation of their limited village lands) to accomodate the migrant workers to the cities with cheap rents, they themselves had become rich landlords for a very long time (even though a single unit offers cheap rents, but these former farmers usually have one or multiple 7-storey houses with many studio units inside so the incomes are still huge per month, once those houses are demolished for urban renewal, they are even richer by the hefty govt compensations). Such urban villages have been dismantled in many Chinese cities but Guangzhou cannot afford to do so any more because many of those villages occupy very prime locations nowadays and the costs to tear down these urban villages are too big for the local govt to bear. Moreover, it stablizes the society by offering affordable housing to low-income groups, so the demolition plans in Guangzhou are very slow in comparison to other Chinese cities where the land prices are not as expensive or they launched the demolition plans much earlier (when land prices were low).
@@yankunli-c6m well talking critics about "big brother" as I understand is already bad things) the same is on youtube, I have a bad credit and it deletes half of my comments written
It's not a slum, it's an urban village, and I think it's the kind of place that's friendly to people who are just coming to work here because the rents are low
