SUMMARY: This article focuses on poverty and income inequality in urban China through the analysis of recent data collected from surveys conducted in four of the largest cities in China (1). Based on quantitative measures such as poverty indices and the Gini coefficient, this article looks at poverty and income inequality in three groups: urban residents, urban migrants and rural migrants. The results very clearly suggest that poverty and urban inequalities are a serious problem and that rural migrants are now an important part of the poor urban class. The analysis presented contributes to the debate on how to improve public policies to combat poverty, which currently focus only on officially registered urban residents.