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The Qiang people (Chinese: 羌族; pinyin: qiāng zú) are an ethnic group of China. They form one of the...

The Qiang people (Chinese: 羌族; pinyin: qiāng zú) are an ethnic group of China. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China, with a population of approximately 200,000, living mainly in northwestern part of Sichuan province. Nowadays, the Qiang are only a small segment of the Chinese population, but they are commonly believed to be an old, once strong and populous people whose history can be traced at least to the Shang Dynasty and whose offsprings are thought to include some portion of the modern Tibetans, some portion of the modern Han Chinese and many minority ethnic groups in Western China. In ancient China literature, Qiang was usually used as a generic term for the non-Huaxia peoples in the west part of modern China. These peoples were frequently at war with the inhabitants of the Yellow River valley. Not until the rise of the state of Qin under Duke Mu was the Qiang expansion effectively checked. A Qiang leader, Yao Chang founded the Later Qin kingdom (384-417) during the Sixteen Kingdoms period of Chinese history. But it should be noted that Qiang was not a distinct ethnic identity until 20–30 years ago. The term "Qiang" (the