> "rural ethnic minorities" means "third world subsistence farming with no health or dental care".

Are you sure? It doesn't mean it by semantic definition, so is there another ~authoritative source you're referring to that establishes that meaning?

Rural ethnic minorities in China live a life that consists solely of "third world subsistence farming with no health or dental care", or they do not. And then on top of this is the question of why, specifically, is it plausibly because they are ethnic minorities, as in: no non-minority Chinese exist that have a "third world subsistence farming with no health or dental care".

Is this not the point of contention?

I do not have this deep of knowledge of on the ground reality in China. Is there a data source of some kind we can turn to to resolve this uncertainty?

I should have been more specific. Rural, or cities below a certain tier, in general, often means very poor in China. The ethnic minority areas are very rural and far away from places that generate wealth.

It's not because they're minorities in an American sense, the government there actually gives ethnic minorities a lot of extra privileges, they get to have more kids, etc. There's a form of affirmative action where they're "bussed" to other areas, which of course gets reported in the west as yet another form of repression. Not speaking Chinese is going to be an obstacle to getting ahead in general.

I don't have a cite, this is all based on conversations I've had and what I've seen of rural reality in China (haven't been to Tibet, Xinjiang or Inner Mongolia, but I've seen some really crappy lifestyles for rural poor Han Chinese. And they thought things were going great! Much better than in past decades).

In the case of the Uighur, “rural ethnic minorities” isn’t really an apt name anyway. For the last several centuries, the Uighurs have broadly been towndwellers. (Other minorities in Xinjiang like the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz or the Iranian-speaking peoples maintain a more traditional rural life). Already on their own, the Uighur were on a path towards enjoying all the fruits of urban modernity. Most of the Chinese development brought to the area has been focused on making life better for Han Chinese settlers, not the indigenous population.