China’s gap between the rich and the poor is increasing. Between the 1980s and the early 2000s China went from modest to roughly medium levels of income inequality (Whyte 2010, p. 2). In Political Science, unequal distribution of wealth within a society has been found to be closely linked to the stability of authoritarian regimes, though researchers disagree with respect to the specific nature of this relationship (Boix 2003, Acemoglu and Robinson 2006). With medium levels of income inequality, Chinese leaders are wise to worry about social stability. Or so Political Scientists may argue. In “Myth of the Social Volcano,” Martin Whyte shows that rising income inequality per se may not lead to outrage or popular resentment among the population. On the basis of a national survey conducted in 2004 using random spatial probability sampling (Landry and Shen 2005), he carefully examines how Chinese citizens have adapted to the fundamental changes of moving from a socialist to a market economy and how they view the new social order that has evolved as part of this transformation. The first part of the book focuses on people’s evaluations of patterns of inequalities in their society; the second half of the book explores differences among geographical regions and social groups, including migrants, SOE workers, and farmers, to name just a few examples. Surprisingly, Whyte detects a fair amount of acceptance, rather than anger, about inequalities. Respondents believed that overall patterns of inequality in Chinese society were fair enough to enable individuals to advance based on hard work, talent, and education rather than, for example, personal connections (47). Although most people agreed that the gap between the rich and the poor was larger than it should be (43), there was little support for socialist redistributive policies, such as systematic redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor (51). Instead, most people supported J OF CHIN POLIT SCI (2012) 17:211–212 DOI 10.1007/s11366-012-9193-3