Chinese Sociological Review

Rural-Urban Inequality in Post-Reform China: Persistent Divides and Key Stratifying Forces

Since the onset of market reforms, China has experienced rapid economic growth and profound social transformation. A central concern throughout this process has been the rural–urban inequality—traditionally structured by the hukou system and continuously shaped by uneven development based on regional disparities between coastal and interior provinces and city-countryside gaps within regions. Over the past four decades, the Chinese state has launched a series of policies and programs to reduce rural–urban inequality, such as the abolition of agricultural taxes in 2006, the expansion of the New Rural Cooperative Medical System, targeted poverty alleviation campaigns, and initiatives to promote rural revitalization. These efforts aimed at improving rural livelihoods, expanding social protection, advancing infrastructure development, and enhancing access to welfare and public services.

Despite these efforts, rural–urban inequality remains persistent, and in some domains may even be widening (Yao and Zhu 1998; Zhong 2022; etc). These inequalities manifest not only in income and consumption, but also in life chances, mobility opportunities, and exposure to risks, including precarious employment, health vulnerabilities, and environmental hazards. Rural populations and rural-origin migrants continue to face cumulative disadvantages across the life course.

At the same time, more troubling is the emergence of what we term "paradoxical stratification mechanisms"—social forces that were initially designed or expected to reduce inequality but might have instead contributed to deepening divides. Three prominent examples illustrate this paradox. First, the massive expansion of higher education since the late 1990s was anticipated to equalize educational opportunities and facilitate upward mobility for rural youth. However, evidence suggests that urban students continue to enjoy disproportionate advantages in accessing elite universities, while rural students face structural barriers including unequal school quality, information asymmetries, and financial constraints (Yueng 2013; Li et al. 2015; Guo and Chen 2023; Tian et al. 2022 etc.). Second, the rapid development of the digital economy, internet infrastructure, gig work, and creative industries, promoted as new pathways for rural development and entrepreneurship, has simultaneously created new forms of digital exclusion, as rural populations encounter challenges in digital literacy, access to quality internet services, and integration into digital economic networks (e.g., Wang et al. 2025). Third, the massive expansion of high-speed rail networks and ride-hailing platforms, intended to facilitate mobility, connect areas with different infrastructures and facilities, and equalize development opportunities, may instead be reinforcing social and spatial hierarchies and facilitating the extraction of talent and capital from lagging regions to economically developed hubs, while transportation costs and access remain unequal for urban and rural populations.

These paradoxical effects underscore the complexity of rural-urban inequality in contemporary China. Macro-level social forces operate with dual effects—simultaneously creating opportunities for convergence while generating new mechanisms of divergence. Understanding these contradictory dynamics requires fresh theoretical perspectives and empirical investigations that move beyond simplistic narratives of either inevitable progress or perpetual inequality. This proposed special issue for Chinese Sociological Review addresses this need.

Specifically, this special issue aims to:

1. Document and explain the persistent and evolving forms of rural–urban inequality in post-reform China, going beyond income measures to encompass multidimensional outcomes such as housing, education, gender relations, migration experiences, digital inclusion, and family strategies.
2. Theorize the dual roles of key macro-level forces—state policies, market mechanisms, institutional arrangements, and technological and demographic changes—as both potential equalizers and stratifiers.
3. Integrate macro- and micro-level analyses by linking institutional and structural transformations (e.g., hukou reforms, urbanization strategies, digitalization policies) with everyday practices and lived experiences of rural and urban residents.
4. Advance comparative and longitudinal perspectives on rural–urban inequality, including historical comparisons across reform phases and cross-regional or international comparisons, where appropriate.
5. Bridge quantitative and qualitative approaches. We welcome contributions grounded in sustained fieldwork—qualitative and/or ethnographic engagement in villages, small towns, and large cities, as well as multi-sited and online/offline ethnography. We also encourage methodologically innovative work that leverages new data (e.g., administrative records, big data, mixed methods, web scaping, AI-related and computational methods) to uncover mechanisms of stratification and potential levers of change.

We invite original research articles that address the above-summarized aims with attention to one or more of the following interrelated domains (innovative contributions beyond these themes are also welcome).

(1) Housing Inequality

The commodification of urban housing and the dual land system have created vast disparities in wealth accumulation between urban and rural residents. Topics may include:

• Urban property ownership and rural land rights
• Housing inequality among rural-to-urban migrants
• Intergenerational wealth transfers in the urban and rural contexts
• Housing policies and their differential impacts

(2) Gender Inequality and Family Dynamics

The intersection of gender and rural-urban status produces unique patterns of stratification. Family structures and strategies mediate rural-urban inequality. We welcome research on:

• Urban-rural differences in gendered labor conditions and occupational attainments
• Gender disparities in education and marriage markets across rural-urban contexts
• Gender-differentiated experiences of urbanization and migration
• Intergenerational support and resource transfers
• Marriage patterns and assortative mating across rural-urban boundaries
• Changing family values, fertility decisions, and rural-urban cultural divides

(3) Migration

Internal migration remains central to understanding rural-urban dynamics. Relevant topics may include:

• The hukou system and its evolving role in stratification
• Changing migration patterns: coastal saturation, interior urbanization, and return migration
• The impact of high-speed rail on regional integration and inequality
• Second-generation migrants, skilled migrants, residential segregation and integration
• Left-behind populations, circular migration, and rural communities
• Migration, social networks, and inequality reproduction

(4) Education

Educational inequality remains a critical mechanism of stratification. Topics of interest include:

• Rural-urban differences in educational quality and resources
• Higher education access and the paradox of expansion
• Vocational education pathways and social mobility
• Educational stratification within rural and urban areas

(5) Digital Divide

The digitalization of Chinese society creates new opportunities and challenges. We seek papers addressing:

• Rural-urban gaps in digital infrastructure and internet access
• Digital literacy and skills disparities
• E-commerce, platform entrepreneurship, digital nomadism, gig work, creative industries, and rural development
• Online education and the reproduction of educational inequality
• Digital governance and civic participation gaps

Manuscripts should clearly articulate how their empirical findings or theoretical arguments speak to the overarching theme of rural–urban inequality in post-reform China and to the dual effects of macro-level forces as both equalizers and stratifiers.