Zhonghua minzu
| Zhonghua minzu | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 中華民族 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 中华民族 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | Chinese minzu | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Zhonghua minzu is a political term in modern Chinese nationalism related to the concepts of nation-building, ethnicity, and race in the Chinese nationality. Collectively, the term refers to the 56 ethnic groups of China, but being a part of the Zhonghua minzu does not mean one must have Chinese nationality (Chinese: 中国国籍; pinyin: Zhōngguó guójí) and thus have an obligation to be loyal to the People's Republic of China (PRC).
The Republic of China (ROC) of the Beiyang (1912–1927) period developed the term to describe Han Chinese (hanzu) and four other major ethnic groups (the Manchus, Mongols, Hui, and Tibetans) based on Five Races Under One Union. Conversely, Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang (KMT) envisioned it as a unified composite of Han and non-Han people.
The PRC adopted Zhonghua minzu after the death of Mao Zedong. It was used to describe the Han Chinese and other ethnic groups as a collective Chinese family. Since the late 1980s, Zhonghua minzu (中华民族; 'the Chinese nation') replaced the term Zhongguo renmin (中国人民; 'the Chinese people'), signalling a shift of nationality and minority policy from a multinational communist people's statehood of China to one multi-ethnic Chinese nation state with one single Chinese national identity.