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The Drung (or Dulong), a mountain people of a remote valley in northwest Yunnan, are one of China’s poorest minorities. Since the 1950s, they have received much assistance from the state, and development plans have been implemented. This article focuses on this policy of redistribution and on Drung representations of it, in order to discern established patterns in the power relations between the Drung minority and the encompassing society, and the underlying symbolic logic. A brief description of some principles of Drung political culture, as they appear through history, helps to understand how the Drung’s current situation and their perception of the assistance policy from which they benefit are connected to a notion of “prestige economics,” which leads them to expect from the Party or the state a prosperity commensurate to the prestige that these agencies are credited with. The light shed by this notion allows for an analysis of the Drung’s seemingly enchanted relation with the state, and of the corollaries and consequences of this notion, and to what extent it endures. The state’s assistance then amounts for the Drung to a new form of dependence that can eventually lead to the loss of Drung values.