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==Expansion==
==Expansion==
As early as the 200s BCE, however, the Han people established a strong state, the [[Qin Dynasty]], followed by the [[Han Dynasty]], which controlled a vast area encompassing much of China proper, and even incorporating [[Vietnam]], which was ruled as an integral part of the Chinese empire for as long as a thousand years, from 111 BCE until [[939]] CE.
As early as the 200s BCE, however, the Han people established a strong state, the [[Qin Dynasty]], followed by the [[Han Dynasty]], which controlled a vast area encompassing much of China proper, and even incorporating [[Vietnam]], which was ruled as an integral part of the Chinese empire for as long as a thousand years, from 111 BCE until [[939]] CE.
The term ''Hanren'' ("Han people") seems to have first appeared in [[299]] CE. At that time, it referred to all subjects of the empire, and not to only one particular ethnic group.<ref>Evelyn Rawski, ''Early Modern China and Northeast Asia: Cross-Border Perspectives'', Cambridge University Press (2015), 192.</ref>
Raids and attacks by nomadic peoples from the steppes spurred many Han people to begin migrating south in the 4th-5th centuries CE, however, and by the 8th-12th centuries ([[Tang Dynasty]] through [[Song Dynasty|Song Dynasties]]), the ancestral Han homeland in the northwest was surpassed by southern China - especially the Jiangnan area south of the [[Yangtze River]], around [[Hangzhou]], and the southern coastal provinces of [[Fujian province|Fujian]] and [[Guangdong province|Guangdong]] - which now became the center of gravity of Han Chinese population. While the population in northwest China grew by around 50% over the course of the 8th-12th centuries due to regular population growth, that of southwest China multiplied by a factor of seven in that same period, and by the year 1200, as much as 75% of Han people lived in southern China. As late as the 16th century (during the [[Ming Dynasty]]), population and settlement remained relatively sparse away from the coast, and many inland areas remained completely undeveloped. While millet and barley remained the chief crops in the north, people in the south took up rice as their staple crop, forming the core of dramatic cultural changes.
Raids and attacks by nomadic peoples from the steppes spurred many Han people to begin migrating south in the 4th-5th centuries CE, however, and by the 8th-12th centuries ([[Tang Dynasty]] through [[Song Dynasty|Song Dynasties]]), the ancestral Han homeland in the northwest was surpassed by southern China - especially the Jiangnan area south of the [[Yangtze River]], around [[Hangzhou]], and the southern coastal provinces of [[Fujian province|Fujian]] and [[Guangdong province|Guangdong]] - which now became the center of gravity of Han Chinese population. While the population in northwest China grew by around 50% over the course of the 8th-12th centuries due to regular population growth, that of southwest China multiplied by a factor of seven in that same period, and by the year 1200, as much as 75% of Han people lived in southern China. As late as the 16th century (during the [[Ming Dynasty]]), population and settlement remained relatively sparse away from the coast, and many inland areas remained completely undeveloped. While millet and barley remained the chief crops in the north, people in the south took up rice as their staple crop, forming the core of dramatic cultural changes.