China is a very large country, encompassing a very large number of different people from different ethnic backgrounds. When people in the West think of what a Chinese person looks like, they tend to assume that they look something like [this] (http://static.businessinsider.com/image/4e68f569ecad04a35200002f/image.jpg). This is a person from the Han Chinese ethnic group, one that makes up c.92% of the population of mainland China. Many of the famous Chinese people from history, Wu Zetian, Confucius, Qin Shi Huang etc all belonged to the Han Chinese ethic group.

However, this is not the only ethnic group in China. The largest minorities include Tibetan, Zhuang, Hui, Uygur and Mongol.

This is a photo of [Rebiya Kadeer] (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Rebiya_Kadeer_%282%29.jpg), a Uyghur born in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the Northwest corner of China. Genetically speaking, the Uyghur people share more traits with Europeans than they do with other racial groups in East Asia.

Perhaps the best example of a non-Han Chinese person would be Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, or the [14th Dalai Lama] (http://www.todayifoundout.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/dalai-lama.jpg). Now, he is almost never referred to as Chinese, because of the political problems surrounding the relationship between China and Tibet.

So in answer to your question, is it true to say China is ethnically homogenous? No, it's not. A very large percentage of the population would fit the stereotypes that we ascribe to Han Chinese people. However, we are still left with 8% of the population who are not ethnically Han. This number is around 80 million people, or the entire population of Germany to give it some context.