Zhonghua minzu

[4][5][6][7][8] Zhonghua minzu was established during the early Beiyang (1912–1927) periods to include Han people and four major non-Han ethnic groups: the Manchus, Mongols, Hui, and Tibetans,[9][10] under the notion of a republic of five races (Wǔzú gònghé).

[8] An older proto-nationalist term throughout Chinese history would be Huaxia, but the immediate roots of the Zhonghua minzu lie in the Qing dynasty founded by the Manchu clan Aisin Gioro in what is today Northeast China.

[12] The Qing Emperors sought to portray themselves as ideal Confucian rulers for the Han Chinese, Bogda Khans for the Mongols, and Chakravartin kings for Tibetan Buddhists.

[18] When the Qing conquered Dzungaria in 1759, they proclaimed that the new land was absorbed into China (Dulimbai gurun) in a Manchu language memorial.

[27] Before the rise of nationalism people were generally loyal to the city-state, the feudal fief and its lord or, in the case of China, to a dynastic state.

Fearing that this restrictive view of the ethnic nation-state would result in the loss of large parts of imperial territory, Chinese nationalists discarded this concept.

[citation needed] This development in Chinese thinking was mirrored in the expansion of the meaning of the term Zhonghua minzu.

Originally coined by the late Qing philologist Liang Qichao, Zhonghua minzu initially referred only to the Han Chinese.

[31][32] The concept of Zhonghua minzu was first publicly espoused by President Yuan Shikai in 1912, shortly after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and the founding of the Republic of China.

[citation needed] The concept of Zhonghua minzu nevertheless also leads to the reassessment of the role of many traditional hero figures.