Chinese nationalism is a form of nationalism that asserts that the Chinese people are a nation and promotes the cultural and national unity of all Chinese people. According to Sun Yat-sen's philosophy in the Three Principles of the People, Chinese nationalism is evaluated as multi-ethnic nationalism, which should be distinguished from Han nationalism or local ethnic nationalism.

Modern Chinese nationalism emerged in the late Qing dynasty (1644–1912) in response to China's humiliating defeat at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War and the invasion and pillaging of Beijing by the Eight-Nation Alliance. In the aftermath of both events, China was forced to pay financial reparations and grant special privileges to foreigners. The nationwide image of China as a superior Celestial Empire, which was located at the center of the universe, was shattered, and last-minute efforts to modernize the old system were unsuccessful. These last-minute efforts were best exemplified by Liang Qichao, a late Qing reformer who failed to reform the Qing government in 1896 and was later expelled from China and fled to Japan, where he began to develop his ideas of Chinese nationalism.

The effects of World War I continually shaped Chinese nationalism. Despite the fact that it had joined the Allied Powers, China was again severely humiliated by the Versailles Treaty of 1919, which transferred the special privileges which were given to Germany to the Empire of Japan. This event triggered the May Fourth Movement of 1919, which developed into nationwide protests that were marked by a surge of Chinese nationalism. During the Warlord Era, large-scale military campaigns which were led by the Kuomintang (KMT), overpowered provincial warlords and sharply reduced special privileges for foreigners contributed to the strengthening and aggrandizing of a sense of Chinese national identity.

After the Empire of Japan was defeated by the Allies at the end of World War II, Chinese nationalism again gained traction as China recovered territories which it lost to Japan before the war, including Northeast area and the island of Taiwan. However, the Chinese Civil War (which was paused during the Second Sino-Japanese War) was resumed, damaging the image of a unified Chinese identity. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was victorious in 1949, as the KMT's government retreated to Taiwan. Under CCP Chairman Mao Zedong, the CCP began to employ Chinese nationalism as a political tool. Chinese nationalism has become more Han-centric since Xi Jinping became CCP General Secretary and assumed power in 2012.

The first state of China was confirmed as the Shang dynasty (c. 1570 BC-c. 1045 BC). The Chinese concept of the world was largely a division between the civilized world and the barbarian world and there was little concept of the belief that Chinese interests were served by a powerful Chinese state. Commenter Lucian Pye has argued that the modern "nation state" is fundamentally different from a traditional empire, and argues that dynamics of the current People's Republic of China (PRC) – a concentration of power at a central point of authority – share an essential similarity with the Ming and Qing Empires.

As it emerged in the early 20th century, Chinese nationalism was modeled after Japanese nationalism, especially as it was viewed and interpreted by Sun Yat-sen. In 1894, Sun founded the Revive China Society, which was the first Chinese nationalist revolutionary society.

Chinese nationalism was rooted in the long historic tradition in which China was considered the center of the world, in which all other states were offshoots of China and owed some sort of deference to it. That sense of superiority underwent a series of terrible shocks in the 19th century, including large-scale internal revolts, and more grievously the systematic gaining and removal of special rights and privileges by foreign nations which proved their military superiority during the First and Second Opium Wars, based on modern technology that was lacking in China. It was a matter of humiliation one after another, the loss of faith in the Qing dynasty. By the 1890s, disaffected Chinese intellectuals began to develop "a new nationalist commitment to China as a nation-state in a world dominated by predatory imperialist nation states." Overall, their concern was not in preserving a traditional Chinese order but instead the construction of a strong state and society that could stand in a hostile international arena.

Unlike many nationalist projects in other countries, the trend among Chinese intellectuals was to regard tradition as unsuitable for China's survival and instead to view tradition as a source of China's problems. For the Qing dynasty, ethnicity was a troublesome issue. Some of the ethnic groups within the empire were identified according to language and culture, including the Manchus who originated in a non-Han Chinese population and ruled the dynasty. Most citizens had multiple identities, of which the locality was more important than the nation as a whole. Anyone who wanted to rise in government non-military service had to be immersed in Confucian classics, and pass the imperial examination. If accepted, they would be rotated around the country, so the bureaucrats did not identify with the locality. The depth of two-way understanding and trust developed by European political leaders and their followers did not exist.