The history of China spans several millennia across a wide geographical area, and can be under many diverse historiographical lenses. Each region now considered part of the Chinese world has experienced periods of unity, fracture, prosperity, and hardship. Classical Chinese civilization first emerged in the Yellow River valley, which along with the Yangtze and Pearl valleys now constitute the geographic core of China and have for the majority of its imperial history. China maintains a rich diversity of ethnic and linguistic people groups. The traditional lens for viewing Chinese history is the dynastic cycle: imperial dynasties rise and fall, and are ascribed certain achievements. Throughout pervades the narrative that Chinese civilization can be traced as an unbroken thread many thousands of years into the past, making it one of the cradles of civilization. At various times, states representative of a dominant Chinese culture have directly controlled areas stretching as far west as the Tian Shan, the Tarim Basin, and the Himalayas, as far north as the Sayan Mountains, and as far south as the delta of the Red River.

The Neolithic period saw increasingly non-parochial societies begin to emerge along the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. For example, the Erlitou culture existed throughout the central plains of China during the era traditionally attributed to the Xia dynasty (c.  2070–1600 BCE) by Chinese historiographers in foundational works like the Records of the Grand Historian—a text written around 1700 years after the date assigned to the fall of the Xia. The earliest surviving written Chinese dates to roughly 1250 BCE, consisting of divinations inscribed on oracle bones. Chinese bronze inscriptions, ritual texts dedicated to deceased ancestors, form another large corpus of early Chinese writing. The earliest strata of received literature in Chinese include poetry, divination, and records of official speeches. China is believed to be one of a very few loci of independent invention of writing, and the earliest surviving records display an already-mature written language. The culture remembered by the earliest extant literature is that of the decentralized Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–256 BCE), during which bureaucratization increased, chariot-based warfare was superseded by infantry, the earliest classical texts took shape, the Mandate of Heaven was introduced, and philosophies such as Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism were first articulated.