The Sibe are a Tungusic-speaking East Asian ethnic group living mostly in Xinjiang, Jilin and Shenyang in Liaoning. The Sibe form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by China, and had a recorded population of 191,911 in the 2020 Chinese Census, comprising just over 0.014% of China's total population.

The Sibe are known by several variations of their name. The self-appellation of the Sibe people is pronounced Śivə, the official Chinese term is Xibo, in Russian literature the terms Сибинцы (sibintsy) and Шибинцы (shibintsy) are used, while in English works the name Sibe has been established, which corresponds to the written form.

According to the Russian scholar Elena P. Lebedeva, the Sibe people originated as a southern, Tungusic-speaking offshoot of the ancient Shiwei people. They lived in small town-like settlements, a portion of them nomadic, in the Songyuan and Qiqihar areas of what is now Jilin.

When the Buyeo kingdom was conquered by the Xianbei in 286 AD, the southern Shiwei started practicing agriculture. Some historians have theorized that the Xianbei were the direct progenitors of the Sibe, a theory described by some as politically motivated. Pamela Kyle Crossley writes the Xianbei might have undergone a language shift from an earlier Turkic or proto-Mongolian language to a Tungusic one. However, the name "Sibe" was not used in historical records during Xianbei times.

The Han dynasty, Cao Wei and the Jin dynasty (266–420) at times controlled the Sibe until the advent of the Göktürks, who accorded the Sibe lower status than did the Chinese dynasties. At the height of their territorial dispersion, the Sibe lived in an area bounded by Jilin to the east, Hulunbuir to the west, the Nen River to the north and the Liao River to the south. After the fall of the Liao dynasty, the Sibe became vassals of the Khorchin Mongols who moved to the Nen and Songhua river valleys in 1438 after the Khorchin were defeated by the Oirats.

Nurhaci, the first prominent figure of the Manchu people, routed the Sibe during the battle of Gure in 1593 on his way to founding the Qing dynasty of China. From that point, the Qing contracted the Sibe for logistical support against the Russian Empire's expansionism on China's northern border. Crossley claims that the Sibe were so "well known to Russians moving toward the Pacific" that the Russians named Siberia after them. In 1692, the Khorchin dedicated the Sibe, the Gūwalca and the Daur to the Kangxi Emperor in exchange for silver. The Sibe were incorporated into the Eight Banners and were stationed in Qiqihar and other cities in Northeast China.

In 1700, some 20,000 Qiqihar Sibes were resettled in Hohhot (modern Inner Mongolia); 36,000 Songyuan Sibes were resettled in Shenyang, Liaoning. The relocation of the Sibe from Qiqihar is believed by Gorelova to be linked to the Qing's complete annihilation of the Manchu clan Hoifan (Hoifa) in 1697 and the Manchu tribe Ula in 1703 after they revolted against the Qing. According to Jerry Norman, after a revolt by the Qiqihar Sibes in 1764, the Qianlong Emperor ordered an 800-man military escort to transfer 18,000 Sibe to the Ili River of Dzungaria.

In Ili, the Xinjiang Sibe built Buddhist monasteries and cultivated vegetables, tobacco and poppies. The Sibe population declined after the Qing used them to suppress the Dungan Revolt (1862–77) by the Hui and to fight against the Russian occupation of Ili during the revolt. The scarcity of provisions in Ili became such that the Governor at last saw himself obliged to dismiss his last auxiliaries, the Thagor Kalmuks. In the meantime both Solons and Sibos were being attacked and plundered and were obliged to make peace with the insurgents, so that only Ili, Khorgos, Losigun and Suidun, remained in the hands of the Mantchus. Ili was now entirely surrounded and it was resolved to reduce it by famine. The situation there was indeed frightful; all the provisions had been exhausted and the only food was horses, dogs and cats. Typhus so raged that from 50 to 100 men died daily.