Numbering fewer than a quarter of a million, the Manchus conquered the Chinese empire, establishing the Qing dynasty m 1644. Today, they am a national minority of about three million - one of the several 'more advanced' nationalities (the Han being the 'most advanced') as opposed to the 'retarded' nationalities such as the Tibetan, Yi and Dai peoples. They can be found throughout China, but live mostly in Beijing, in the northeastern provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang and Hebei, and in Inner Mongolia.
The Manchus' identity as a race or nationality has tended to elude both Manchus and non-Manchus alike. In a sense, they invented themselves: People of Jurchen, Mongolian, Han Chinese and Korean descent who lived in the northeast and had developed a distinctive society first identified themselves using the collective term 'Manchu' only in 1635. The fact that they were barbarians who had been kept beyond the empire's north-east border, and were so weak numerically compared with the Han Chinese, must have made the fall of the Ming all the more humiliating to the Hans.
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