The chapter discusses Chinese state policy towards ethnic minorities from 1949 to 2009. It analyses interactions of the minorities with the Chinese state. It also considers how minorities issues have affected China's relations with the outside world over those sixty years, including an emphasis on how the Tibetans and Uygurs have influenced China and its foreign relations. The chapter concludes that China is more unified and better integrated than in the past, despite the rise of ethnic consciousness. It also suggests that, although relations between the dominant Han on the one hand and Tibetans and Uygurs on the other have deteriorated in the twenty-first century, the rise of ethnic consciousness among the great majority of ethnic minorities has not promoted conflict, which is no more significant among ethnic groups than within them. The chapter argues that, despite some major crises, The minorities are an important factor in their influence on China in general and its foreign relations in particular, but China is integrated well enough to be very unlikely to disintegrate in the foreseeable future and is better connected with the rest of the world than it used to be.