Between 2016 and 2020, the Chinese authorities will have resettled nearly 10 million people throughout China’s inland provinces with the aim of eliminating absolute poverty in rural areas. Looking at the case of Southern Shaanxi, this essay reflects on specific poverty resettlement projects, and Chinese resettlement practice more broadly, to try to make sense of the intent and impact of such large-scale interventions on both the lives of individuals and the transformation of the Chinese countryside as a whole.