Poverty and Inequality Among Chinese Minorities, by A. S. Bhalla and Shufang Qiu. London: Routledge, 2006. xx + 202 pp. £65.00 (hardcover). This is a frustrating book which searches for an answer to an important question: are China's minorities poorer than its majority Han population, and if so, why? The authors answer: "... we have shown that several factors account for poverty among minorities: low incomes, geographical location or remoteness, mountainous terrain, underdeveloped infrastructure, ... low educational levels, poor access to health services and concentration on farming as a major economic activity ... these economic forces have been far more important in explaining poverty among Chinese minorities than their cultural backwardness, religion, or social values" (p. 168). Just reading this answer, anyone who has worked or even traveled in minority regions would be likely to exclaim, "Duh!", but this would be a bit unfair to tbe authors who, while they do not actually test the contrary hypothesis that it is culture or laziness that makes minorities poor, have at least attempted to test all the geographic and economic variables they mention in the quote above. In doing so, they have performed a useful service. The ways in which they have tested these explanations, and the ways in which they present their results, are what makes the book frustrating. The book begins with a review of definitions of poverty and explanations for why people are poor; the authors then choose a hybrid set of variables by which to measure poverty, namely income, literacy and basic education, and health status and services. Drawing mainly on the southwestern provinces of Guizhou, Guangxi, Yunnan and Sichuan, they devote one chapter to each of these elements of poverty, and then spend their final two chapters evaluating recent government attempts to reduce poverty, first nationwide and then in more detail in the case of Guizhou (with a nod to Yunnan). Leaving aside their methods and presentation for a minute, we can quickly summarize the book's results. With regard to income, these are a bit difficult to summarize. On the one hand, most sources show that minorities within each of the provinces studied have lower incomes than do Han people. On the other, some survey data collected by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences indicate that this gap seems to have lessened in both Yunnan and Guizhou between the survey dates of 1988 and 1995, so that rural minorities in those two provinces actually caught up with and surpassed rural Han. This was not true for Sichuan or Guangxi, however, and since urban populations have smaller proportions of minorities, overall Han-minority income gaps remain. The authors' explanations, however, seem inconsistent: while denying that cultural factors play a part, they also deny (p. 70) that poverty is localized, so one is left slightly bewildered as to what their explanation might be. For education, their explanation is clearer. They find that, in the 1980s and 1990s, the previous gap in basic literacy and elementary education between Han and minorities closed up, as did the gap that was previously attributable to factors of location and the difficulty that students in remote areas have in getting to school. But the gap in secondary and higher education did not diminish during this time, and this in fact may have contributed to the continuing income gaps. …