Empirically, it's mostly been rural communities that have had their living standards raised (by moving into cities). It's not very pretty, but on a purely numerical level the benefactors far outnumber the hurt (using a very specific framing of increased lived experience).

I am not a fan of the CCP to put it mildly. China is the only country with poor Chinese people for a reason and the reason is the CCP. But in the 11 years I’ve lived in Shanghai things have quite visibly improved, in terms of infrastructure, quality of basically every consumer good, wages. Things have improved less here, relatively, than elsewhere.

The countryside is emptying of people in China as in every other country, just starting later and moving faster. Being a peasant is no fun. That’s why people leave as soon as they can.

How much countryside is there anyway? On the map, China looks like a tightly-knit mesh of huge multi-million cities, all with high speed rail and subway systems, and huge malls. I doubt they're as poor as miserable as they should be according to the picture painted.