Due to their proximity to the government, Beijing people have the opportunity to take in oodles of news that never gets reported. The events of MCMLXXX1X are, perhaps, the best example.

My company's lead counsel was a student at Peking University then and, while he did not take part in the protests themselves, was close enough to the action to provide vivid accounts. Some of the main takeaways:

-what occurred then was far worse than the info that made into the western press
-EVERYONE who was in Beijing at the time has a pretty good grasp of the real story
-strong incentives were put in place to prevent their accounts from spreading beyond the capital

Contrast the above with my experiences in Nanjing. When I was living in there in 1995, I taught an English class (first and last time dabbling in that field) and showed my students the pictures (of the afforementioned events) in the middle of Johnathan Spence's, In Search of Modern China. They took the position that the pictures must have been fabricated in order to make China look bad.

I think people in the provinces are much better informed today, thanks to the internet and a growing command of English.