Multiracial people in the People's Republic of China are those considered to belong to more than one race or whose parents are considered to belong to different races. In a Chinese context, this generally involves one parent belonging to the Han majority and the other belonging to one of the nation's minority groups. In foreign coverage, discussion generally focuses on the children of a Chinese citizen and a foreigner.
For decades following the Chinese Communist Revolution, marriages between laowai (non-East Asian foreigners) and Chinese were unusual and perhaps even nonexistent during the Cultural Revolution, but they were never explicitly banned or judged unacceptable on a racial basis. It was only in the mid-1970s that the first petitions for permission to marry foreigners were accepted, with the thawing of diplomatic ties between China and the United States. Such marriages remained relatively unusual for another two decades.
From 1994 to 2008, each year has seen about 3,000 more mixed race marriages in Shanghai than the previous year. This has caused a major shift in China's attitudes to race and to Chinese children of mixed race heritage, because of globalization.