Poverty and Development in China: Alternative Approaches to Poverty Assessment

At the core of this book, there is a central and primary question: who
is poor in rural China? But to this one simple question, there have to be
many complex answers.
The salience of this inquiry needs little justification. It is a vital issue
in itself; but it also has wider strategic relevance. Did the benefits of the
recent decades of explosive export-oriented economic growth touch the
distant peasantry in Yunnan? New poverty reduction policies were expected
to reach parts and people that this growth did not reach; did they?
Local approaches are meant to be guided by local participation; are they?
And, needless to say, what happens in China heavily influences the global
incidence of poverty.