This study examines statistics on minority illiteracy from the 1990 Chinese national census across age groups in relation to China's changing language policy among three types of minority communities: (1) those with writing systems of historically broad usage; (2) those with writing systems of historically limited usage, and (3) those without functional writing systems. China's language policy as a whole has had the strongest negative impacts on illiteracy reduction in type 2 communities, which may have stronger group identity and social resistance to the use of Chinese, but no regular bilingual education. The change towards a Chinese-monopolistic policy harmed illiteracy reduction, especially in type 1 communities with a smaller Chinese-speaking minority population. The recent change towards pluralism has thus far shown mixed results in all three types of communities.