The 2000 Chinese census, officially the Fifth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China (Chinese: 中华人民共和国第五次全国人口普查), was conducted by the government of the People's Republic of China with 1 November 2000 as its zero hour.

[note 2] The census did not include the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.

Based on the results of the Fifth National Population Census, Henan was the most populous province-level division, Shandong was ranked second, Guangdong and Sichuan were third and fourth, and Jiangsu, Hebei, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, and Zhejiang were ranked fifth through tenth.

There were four province-level divisions with an ethnic minority population of more than 10 million: in decreasing order, Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, and Xinjiang.

In Qinghai, Guangxi, Guizhou, Ningxia, and Yunnan the ethnic minority population was greater than 30%.

In Hainan, Liaoning, and Hunan it was more than 10%, and in Jilin and Gansu it was also greater than the nationwide proportion of 8.41%.

Seven other ethnic groups, including the Moinba, Oroqen, and Drung, had a population of less than 10,000 each; among them, the Tatars, Hezhe, indigenous Taiwanese, and Lhoba had less than 50,000 each.

There were 734,438 people belonging to unrecognized ethnic groups, including 710,486 in Guizhou (96.74% of the total), 7,404 in Yunnan (1.01%), and more than 1,000 in each of Tibet, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Jiangsu.