text: Another important aspect of the rural-urban divide during the Mao era was the reduction of urban population after the Famine. High-ranking party leaders, including Chen Yun and Li Xiannnian realized that food consumption of the urban population had been putting too much pressure on the grain production in the countryside. As a result, the party implemented the downsizing policy to send migrants and unwanted urban populations back to communes and successfully limited and deceased the urban population. During the process of downsizing, some urban residents tried to avoid leaving the cities by feigning medical issues or threatening to die. Still, from late 1960 to 1963, the total population dispatched from urban to rural areas was up to 26 million in total. The readjustment of the urban-rural population reinforced the existing urban-biased social dynamic.
  The “dual” social structure pushed people to migrate internally from the countryside to the urban areas. Yet, after the famine, the state imposed stricter migration control. There were limited choices for people to realize the upward mobility from rural to urban registration through military service, urban employment, marriage, and the college entrance exam. Yet, despite strict control, hidden and illicit migrations were still ongoing. People negotiated with the hukou system, and many of them traveled between urban and rural boundary. Some people managed to get away from rural registration in the countryside by working on state-owned farms or utilizing their personal relations to stay in the urban areas even without urban registration.
  During the Cultural Revolution, the composition of society changed again. Schools were closed and many youths were sent down to the countryside putatively to learn from the peasants. Concern for peasants was reflected in the rural medical and educational services known as barefoot doctors and barefoot teachers. The life expectancy of peasants increased from less than forty years before 1949 to more than sixty years in the 1970s. At the same time, peasants were still the most illiterate, most powerless, and poorest social class.