Pastoralists in western China are highly vulnerable due to harsh natural conditions and the poor socioeconomic environment they confront. More than 50% of the pastoralists in major grassland areas are living below the survival line; moreover, around 90% of the usable grasslands in China have been degraded to some degree, and the degradation expands at a rate of two million ha per year. Enhancing pastoralists’ resilience is desirable for the economic development and social stability in pastoral areas. As an important aspect influencing livelihoods, grassland tenure in China has not been well studied to learn how it affects the welfare of pastoralists, and what can be done to strengthen their resilience. Based on the evidence from four periods of fieldwork conducted by the authors during 2005–2014, the study applies an analytical framework adapted from the sustainable livelihood theory to examine the interactions of grassland tenure, livelihood assets of pastoralists and their resilience. Main findings show that the existing grassland tenure arrangements cause unbalanced and decreased livelihood assets, which in turn reduce the resilience of pastoralists by lowering their capacities of coping with stresses or shocks. Of the policies and measures aiming to enhance the pastoralists’ adaptive capacity and ongoing development, building social capital is critical. Developing functional livelihood asset markets such as grassland rental markets and financial markets will also contribute to a more robust livelihood structure.

Technical efficiency (TE) means the effectiveness of production outputs attained for a given level of production inputs. This study examines pastoralist TE and its determinants for 416 pastoralist households from two leagues (prefectures) in eastern Inner Mongolia, a typical rangeland area in China. A one-step stochastic frontier method is applied to analyse data about household livestock production in 2011 to assess opportunities for increasing income and reducing poverty through increased TE. The main results show that pastoralists, in general, did not perform well with currently available technology, with the average TE score just 0.50 out of 1.0. Only about one-fifth (20.2%) of respondents had TE scores >0.7, and the same proportion had a TE score <0.3. More than one-quarter had TE scores in the range 0.3–0.5, and slightly more than one-third had TE scores in the range 0.5–0.7. About 83% of the variation in pastoralist livestock production is explained by the loss of TE. The age of the head of household, available pasture, investment in covered pens and participation in the rangeland rental market were found to influence TE. Encouraging younger pastoralists to enter pastoralism, and enlarging available grazing land through the rangeland rental market or cooperative rangeland use would likely enhance pastoralist performance; promoting investment in covered-pen construction could also improve productivity and alleviate a rangeland degradation cycle, which is pervasive in the study area.