ABSTRACT
China’s market ‘reforms’, in addition to generating rapid rises in average incomes, have been responsible for some unsavoury outcomes, in particular, conspicuous polarization in standards of living. This fact has already been roundly acknowledged. But it has become a cliché to claim that serious poverty in China should be viewed as geographically based, whether rural versus urban, coastal versus inland, or east against west. Indeed, there is now a cottage industry documenting these disparities (Shue and Wong 2007; Gustafsson et al. 2008; Davis and Wang 2009; Gallagher and Hanson 2009).
