Wudangquan (Chinese: 武當拳; pinyin: Wǔdāngquán) is a class of Chinese martial arts. In contemporary China, Chinese martial arts styles are generally classified into two major groups: Wudang (Wutang), named after the Wudang Mountains; and Shaolin, named after the Shaolin Monastery. Whereas Shaolin includes many martial art styles, Wudangquan includes only a few arts that use the focused mind to control the body. This typically encompasses tai chi, xingyiquan and baguazhang, but most also include bajiquan and Wudang Sword.

The association with Wudang originated with a popular Chinese legend in which tai chi, Wudang sword, and other internal martial arts are purported to have been created by an immortal Taoist hermit named Zhang San Feng. The terms Wudang and Shaolin were selected in the early twentieth century by the first modern Chinese martial arts historians to distinguish internal and external martial arts. However, they and later historians have found no historical connection between those broad categories and either place.

Since then, the term Wudangquan has often been used synonymously with neijia, but the term neijia encompasses all internal martial arts as well as qigong which is not a martial art.

The term neijia and the distinction between internal and external martial arts first appears in Huang Zongxi's 1669 Epitaph for Wang Zhengnan. Stanley Henning proposes that the Epitaph's identification of the internal martial arts with the Taoism indigenous to China and of the external martial arts with the foreign Buddhism of Shaolin—and the Manchu Qing dynasty to which Huang Zongxi was opposed—was an act of political defiance rather than one of technical classification.

In 1676 Huang Zongxi's son, Huang Baijia, who learned martial arts from Wang Zhengnan, compiled the earliest extant manual of internal martial arts, the Neijia quanfa.

In the late 1800s, Dong Haichuan began teaching baguazhang to a very select group of individuals. The highly-notable xingyiquan stylist Liu De Kuan was among those who learned this special art from Dong. Liu was a very friendly martial artist who had also learned tai chi from Yang Luchan. Liu's friendly nature and experience with the three "internal" martial arts created an easy forum for discussion and knowledge-sharing between practitioners of these arts.^{[citation needed]} In 1894, an alliance was created with Cheng Tinghua representing baguazhang while Li Cunyi and Liu Weixiang represented xingyiquan; and although Liu De Kuan practiced all three arts, he represented tai chi. The alliance grouped the three arts under the umbrella of "Neijia," and swore brotherhood among its associates and practitioners. Cheng Ting Hua was shot and killed by German soldiers during the Boxer Rebellion (1900), which likely strengthened the alliance.

Around 1912, the third-generation bagua zhang master Fu Chen Sung was traveling throughout Northern China to meet and learn from the best martial artists when he met the Wudang Sword grandmaster Song Weiyi in Liaoning Province; Fu learned Sung's Wudang Sword and fighting forms: Lightning Palm and Rocket Fist. Fu joined General Li Jinglin's army in 1920. General Li Jinglin had also met Song Weiyi in the early 1900s while garrisoned in Liaoning Province, and had also learned Song's Wudang Sword techniques.

In 1925, General Zhang Zhijiang began to propagate his belief that martial arts should be used to improve the health of the Chinese people. He suggested the creation of a Central Martial Arts Academy (Central Guoshu Institute), and was named Director. General Li Jinglin, retired from his military career, was named Vice-Chairman to the Academy. General Li's kung fu advisor was the famous bajiquan master Li Shuwen.