Ethnically the great majority of the Chinese population are the Han Chinese. These are the Chinese we generally know, the "Chinese" Chinese. Han was a dynasty that reigned China from the 3rd century B.C. to about 200 A.D. That was when the Chinese started to call themselves the Han people. The Han Chinese account for over 90% of the total population of China.

In addition to tbe Han Chinese, there are a large number of minority groups in China, about fifty of them altogether. The largest groups are the Manchu, Uighurs, Mongols, Tibetans, and zhuang. Many of these minorities maintain their own cultural traditions and concentrate in certain regions of China. Some of them, however, have assimilated to the Han Chinese to a great extent. One such example is the Manchu, who conquered China in the 17th century and established the Qing dynasty that ruled China from 1644 to 1911. During the period and afterward, the Manchu picked up Chinese ways, to the point where today few of them could speak their original language. They are, however, still officially identified as a minority group in China.