Hui people
ethnoreligious islamic group of China
The Hui people are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the northwestern provinces and in the Zhongyuan region. According to the 2020 census, China is home to approximately 11.3 million Hui people. Outside China, the 170,000 Dungan people of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan as well as the Panthays in Myanmar and many of the Chin Haws in Thailand are also considered part of the Hui ethnicity.
The Hui were referred to as Hanhui to be distinguished from the Turkic Muslims, which were referred to as Chanhui. The Republic of China (1912–1949) government also recognised the Hui as a branch of the Han Chinese rather than a separate ethnic group. In the National Assembly of the Republic of China, the Hui were referred to as Nationals in China proper with special convention. The Hui were referred to as Muslim Han people by Bai Chongxi, the Minister of National Defense of the Republic of China at the time and the founder of the Chinese Muslim Association. Some scholars refer to this group as Han Chinese Muslims, Han Muslims, Chinese Muslims or Sino-Muslims. While others call them Chinese-speaking Muslims or Sinophone Muslims.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q183573. The Library of Congress control number is sh2005004566. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 1912 and 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hui people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.