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Abstract
Within the borders of The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) are 55 officially recognized ethnic minority groups. While attempting to modernize and encourage economic development, the government of the PRC has faced many obstacles. This has resulted in hugely uneven levels of economic development across the differing regions of the PRC. The various ethnic minorities are concentrated in the periphery of China and are significantly less developed than the core. The goal of this study is to examine some of the measures of development to determine which factors are involved in regional inequality and to suggest how these differences may be influenced by economic, geographical, or other factors outside of current government policy. The analysis utilized various measures of equality, including the development of an index of inequality for measuring the distribution of various factors. Panel data analysis and focus on four representative minority provinces provided further opportunities for evaluation.