Abstract: Based on the national education statistics of 2003 and 2013, this paper aims to make comparison between China's urban and rural areas in basic education resource allocation, its development and the urban-rural differences. The comparison shows that the rural basic education resources lag behind in faculty, books, and computers. Moreover, the urban-rural gap in pre-school education and high school education is broadening, which has probably become the most hazardous issue in China's basic education. Therefore, only emphasizing on the urban-rural balance in compulsory education won't help address the situation of unequal educational opportunities for rural children.#br#This paper focuses on the potential social consequences caused by such disparity. The"education chain" refers to the complete sequence of education nodes ranging from basic education to higher education and it contributes to the understanding of possible education path choices at individual and family level. In summary, the urban-rural differences in allocating basic education resources can cause at least three consequences as follows:#br#A. Influence on rural students. Compared with urban students, rural students' academic performance is poor and the completion rate of"education chain" is much lower, affected by disproportionate distribution of educational resources.#br#B. Influence on educational equity. The rural-urban disparity in basic education resources centers on the period of high school, which is regarded as the last"opportunity" to transfer from basic education into higher education in the"education chain". Therefore, it is biased to attribute the inferior position of rural students' access to higher education to the inequitable urban-rural higher education. The key factor is the inequitable urban-rural enrolling opportunity in secondary education. The urban-rural inequality of access to senior secondary education from junior secondary school continues to expand, resulting in the decline of opportunities for rural students' admission to college. Its root cause lies in the disparity between rural and urban basic education resources allocation. #br#C. Influence on rural education. Due to the huge urban-rural difference in education resources, individuals and families have to come to realize that the sooner they choose urban education, the more likely they will finish the whole"education chain". As a consequence, they tend to use all sorts of capital reasonably to achieve children's fulfillment of"education chain" in the city, which directly lead to the loss of rural student pool.#br#Although great achievements have been made in China's rural basic education in the past 30 years, the urban-rural difference and its negative effects remain to be the bottleneck of basic education and block the progress of social development. The distribution of urban and rural basic education resources reflects the imbalance between urban and rural interest structure in China's society, and eliminating such negative effects depends on breaking the dual social structure in urban and rural areas.

Key words: basic education, educational equality, rural-urban difference