CHINA FOREMOST SOCIAL CLEAVAGE: The rural-urban gape

"....What actually happened to China's rural residents was very different from the scenario of systematic promotion of equality under Mao, followed by widening inequality in the era of market reforms...

the actual trend looks much more like descent into serfdom for rural residents in the Mao's era, with only partial liberation from those bonds in the reform era. In other words, in multiple ways the social status, mobility opportunities, ways of life, and even basic citizenship claims of China's rural versus urban residents diverged sharply under the socialist system that Mao and his colleagues created, producing a caste-like division that did not exist before 1949 ...."
The Paradox of Rural-Urban Inequality in Contemporary China, pag 3 by Martin King White Chapter 1 of his book One Country Two Societies, Harvard University Press, 2010