List of Famous people born in People's Republic of China

Zhang Ziyi is a Chinese actress and model. Her first major role was in The Road Home (1999). She later gained international recognition for her role in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. Zhang has also appeared in Rush Hour 2 (2001), Hero (2002), and House of Flying Daggers (2004). Her most critically acclaimed works are Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), which earned her nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role; and The Grandmaster (2013), for which she won 12 different Best Actress awards to become the most awarded Chinese actress for a single film.

Hu Chunhua is a Chinese politician, a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China, and a Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China. He worked in Tibet for much of his career and ascended the party ranks partly through the Communist Youth League. He is popularly known as "little Hu" due to the similarities of his career with that of former Party General Secretary Hu Jintao. He became China's youngest governor when he took the position in Hebei province in 2008. He was then promoted to Party Secretary of Inner Mongolia in 2009. In 2012, he was named Communist Party Secretary of Guangdong and entered the Politburo.

Emperor Guangwu, born Liu Xiu, courtesy name Wenshu, was an emperor of the Chinese Han dynasty, restorer of the dynasty in AD 25 and thus founder of the Later Han or Eastern Han. He ruled over parts of China at first, and through suppression and conquest of regional warlords, the whole of China was consolidated by the time of his death in AD 57.

Chao Yuen Ren, also known as Zhao Yuanren or Yuen Ren Chao was a Chinese-American linguist, educator, scholar, poet, and composer, who contributed to the modern study of Chinese phonology and grammar. Chao was born and raised in China, then attended university in the United States, where he earned degrees from Cornell University and Harvard University. A naturally-gifted polyglot and linguist, his Mandarin Primer was one of the most widely used Mandarin Chinese textbooks in the 20th century. He invented the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization scheme, which, unlike pinyin and other romanization systems, can transcribe Mandarin Chinese pronunciation without needing diacritics to indicate tones.

Hans Zhang Han is a Chinese actor, singer and host. He graduated from Central Academy of Drama in 2007. Zhang is best known for his roles in Meteor Shower (2009) and Meteor Shower II (2010), Fall in Love (2011), The Queen of SOP (2012), Heroes in Sui and Tang Dynasties (2013), Boss & Me (2014), The Four (2015), Wolf Warriors 2 (2017) and Here to Heart (2018).

Su Bingtian is a Chinese sprinter. He was the first ever Asian-born sprinter to break the 10-second barrier of the 100 metres event in track and field. His personal best in the 100 metres makes him the current co-holder of the 100 m Asian record, which is shared with Nigerian-born Qatari Femi Ogunode. Su's personal best in the 60 metres of 6.42 seconds makes him the current holder of the 60 m Asian record and places him within the top five of all-time 60 metres performances.

Step Empress of the Nara clan was the wife and second empress consort of Hongli, the Qianlong Emperor. She was Empress consort of Qing from 1750 until her death in 1766.

Yang Chen-Ning or Chen-Ning Yang, also known as C. N. Yang or by the English name Frank Yang, is a Chinese theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to statistical mechanics, integrable systems, gauge theory, and both particle physics and condensed matter physics. He and Tsung-Dao Lee received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on parity nonconservation of weak interaction. The two proposed that one of the basic quantum-mechanics laws, the conservation of parity, is violated in the so-called weak nuclear reactions, those nuclear processes that result in the emission of beta or alpha particles. Yang is also well known for his collaboration with Robert Mills in developing non-Abelian gauge theory, widely known as the Yang–Mills theory.

Wanting Qu, known simply as Wanting, is a Chinese-born singer-songwriter and pianist who is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist and activist. Ai grew up in the far north-west of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. He investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of "tofu-dreg schools" in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport on 3 April, for "economic crimes". He was detained for 81 days without charge. Ai Weiwei emerged as a vital instigator in Chinese cultural development, an architect of Chinese modernism, and one of the nation's most vocal political commentators.