And unable to become free again: bank credits, cars, ads, junk food, pollution, spying, different sorts of control, expensive medicine which they're forced to use because of pollution and junk food, stress, telling them how to live from mass media.
Sure you skip invasive ads and pollution. But your diet is still abysmal, just try living on rice and soy beans for a few months. The healthcare is poorly accessible, while party control, spying, draft etc are just as omnipresent as everywhere throughout China.
Despite what you see as the drawbacks of modern life, the people who have moved to the cities are far, far better off, and freer, than before.