As the Han people make up 92% of the country's population, the other ethnic groups are usually referred to as minority groups and their combined population accounts for 8% of the national total. Obvious differences exist among the ethnic minorities with respect to the size of the population. Among these ethnic minorities, the most populous is the Zhuang with a population of 13 million, who live in compact communities in Guangxi, South China. The one which has the smallest population is the Hezhe with a little more than 1,500 members, who live scattered in Heilongjiang province, Northeast China. Of the ethnic groups, those with a population exceeding a million number 15, those with over 100,000 people each number 13, and there are 7 others which have more than 50,000 members each and 20 others with a population smaller than that.

In addition, in Yunnan Province, Tibet and other areas, there are some ethnic groups whose national identity remains to be determined.

The Han people live in compact communities mainly in the valleys of the Yellow River, the Yangtze River and the Pearl River and on the Songliao Plain in Northeast China. The minorities, small as their population is, are widely distributed across the country, covering 50 to 60 percent of its territory. They concentrate chiefly in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Guangxi, Ningxia, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong, Hunan, Hebei, Hubei, Fujian and Taiwan. Generally, they live in mountains, highlands, pastoral areas and forest regions.

Due to repeated population migrations, government-imposed land reclamation and immigrations as well as drastic changes in the past, the distribution of China's ethnic groups has followed a pattern in which they live in mixed groups, in compact communities and in noncontiguous areas. For illustration, quite a few ethnic minorities inhabit Yunnan province, Southwest China. The Koreans live in compact communities in Yanbian, Northeast China; the Tujias and Miaos, in western Hunan, Southern China; the Lis, on Hainan Island. Furthermore, about 10 million minority people reside in mixed groups or in non-contiguous areas across the land.

The Han language is the lingua franca of China today.

The 55 ethnic minorities in general have their own languages. Prior to the foundation of new China, except for the Hui, Manchu and She who used the Han language in both spoken and written form as their own, 11 minorities - Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Korean, Kazak, Xibe, Dai, Uzbek, Kirgiz, Tatar and Russian - had their own written scripts in common use. Seven others - Yi, Naxi, Miao, Jingpo, Lisu, Lahu and Va - had their own written scripts, which, however, were not in common use. The rest had no script at all. Following the foundation of new China, with the assistance of the Chinese government, 10 ethnic groups including Zhuang, Bouyei, Miao, Dong, Hani and Li created or standardized their scripts and some others such as the Uygur, Kazak, Jingpo,Lahu and Dai reformed theirs.

With regard to language classification 29 minority tongues belong to the Sino-Tibetan family, 17 to the Altaic family, 3 to the Austro-Asiatic family, 2 to the Indo-European family, and the speech of the Gaoshan in Taiwan to the Malayo-Polyesian family.

The ethnic groups have different religious beliefs. Hui, Uygur, Kazak, Kirgiz, Tatar, Uzbek, Tajik, Dongxiang, Salar and Bonan, 10 groups in all, adhere to Islam. Four other groups - Tibetan, Mongolian, Dai and Yugun - follow Buddhism. Besides, many of the Oroqens, Ewenkis and Daurs believe in Shamanism, a primitive religion. Christianity, and Daoism, a religion native to China, have a certain following among the Han people.

Economic growth is quite uneven among the nationalities as a result of the differences in historical, geographical, communications and natural conditions as well as in the stages of social development. Generally, the level of economic growth of the Han areas is relatively high while that of the minority regions which are remote or far from the Han areas is low.

Equal treatment for all the nation's ethnic groups represents the fundamental principle of the Chinese government to follow in handling the ethnic questions. As stipulated in all the versions of the Constitution promulgated after the foundation of new China, all ethnic groups are equal and discrimination against, or oppression of, any ethnic group and acts undermining the unity of the ethnic groups are prohibited.

The minority groups should be able to take part in the administration of state affairs on an equal footing with the majority Han. They should be guaranteed equal rights at all levels of state power. To this end, the state grants preferential treatment to them with regard to the quotas of their representation in the National People's Congress, the supreme organ of state power, and the local people's congresses. For instance, of the 2,970 deputies to the 7th National People's Congress which was inaugurated in March 1988, 445 were from the ethnic minorities. This figure made up nearly 15% of all the deputies and almost doubled the proportion of the minorities' population in the national total. Moreover, each of the minority was represented.

The institution of regional autonomy represents a basic policy of the Chinese government to solve the country's ethnic problems. The law of regional autonomy for minority groups endorsed by the 6th National People's Congress in 1984 is a basic law which guarantees the implementation of the fundamental principles and stipulations concerning regional autonomy as laid down by the Constitution. To date, 45 of the 55 ethnic minorities have instituted regional autonomy, with 148 autonomous areas established. Those people who enjoy regional autonomy account for 87% of the combined population of all the minorities.

The Chinese government always considers it vital to train qualified minority officials to administer the affairs within their own groups and to turn out as soon as possible qualified minority intellectuals to help reduce poverty in their own areas. So in 1950, it promulgated for trial implementation a program for training officials from among the minority people. To speed up the training of such officials, it set up a dozen or so institutes for minority groups including central, southwest, northwest, Qinghai, Yunnan, Guizhou, Tibet, Guangxi and central-south institutes. In some provinces and autonomous regions special schools or training courses were opened to train minority officials. All this is in addition to the preferential treatment given by various colleges and universities across the country to minority candidates for enrolment.