Huaxia

Huaxia is a historical concept of the Chinese nation. It denotes the self-awareness of a common cultural ancestry by ancestral populations of the Han people. The earliest extant attestation of the concept is found in the Zuo Zhuan, composed before 300 BCE, where it referred to the central states in the Yellow River valley. The Confucian scholar Kong Yingda explained the two characters as signifying ceremonial greatness (xià) and beauty of clothing (huá). In modern historiography, Huaxia refers to a confederation of tribes along the Yellow River regarded as ancestors of the Han nation, with a distinct cultural identity that developed during the Warring States period. The term continues in use today: the official Chinese names of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China incorporate Zhonghua, a compound of Huaxia and Zhongguo, and the word Huaren (華人), meaning a person of Chinese ethnicity, derives from Huaxia.

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