You may not realise how many cities there are in China, and how many "towns" and "villages" have skyscrapers. Think about London, which is half a dozen different cities which all grew into each other.

There's a big demand to live "on the right side of the tracks". Everyone wants to live in the "city" part of the city, not the bit that was once zoned "village", with all China's discrimination against poor rural people, and it may still have a particularly incompetent and corrupt government. But people will get a lot less picky when they realise they actually have to pay back the loans.