Ethnic Groups

The PRC officially recognizes 56 ethnic groups within its borders. These groups are defined primarily through language, culture, or country of origin—not necessarily through genetic make-up. In many cases, a person’s affiliation with a specific ethnicity is wholly self-identified. With over 1.1 billion people, Han Chinese form the dominant majority, comprising almost 92% of China’s population. Of the country’s 55 minority groups, those with the largest populations are the Zhuang (16.1 million), Manchu (10.6 million), Hui (9.8 million), Miao (8.9 million), Uygur (8.3 million), Tujia (8 million), Yi (7.7 million), Mongolian (5.8 million), and Tibetan (5.4 million) peoples. Officially, China states that persons of all ethnicities have equal rights and standing. The government officially advocates the maintenance of minority cultures, but it is staunchly prohibitive of separatist movements that may arise from them.

China’s respective ethnic groups are not exclusively limited to a particular region, but there are general patterns of distribution and concentration. Although Han are spread throughout the majority of the country, they are most predominant in the basins and plains surrounding the major river systems of the eastern region.

Substantial populations of ethnic minorities live in the country’s extensive borderlands and in certain areas of the central and western interior. Several geographic areas where specific ethnicities live in large numbers have been designated by the PRC as autonomous regions, with the implication that each region maintains a sense of local self-government. (Such a designation does not necessarily mean that these ethnicities are the majority group in their region; in some cases, there are only significant local populations.) These regions, designated according to their respective ethnic population, include the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Xizang (Tibet) Autonomous Region, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. At lesser administrative levels, there are also autonomous prefectures and counties that serve a similar purpose. Yunnan Province, located on the southern frontier near Southeast Asia, is particularly significant in terms of ethnic diversity; it is home to 25 ethnic groups.