Chinese ceramic is a form of fine art with a long history, with the first types made about 11,000 years ago. Chinese ceramics range from construction materials such as bricks and tiles to hand-built pottery vessels fired in bonfires or kilns to the sophisticated porcelain wares made for the imperial court.In China, ceramics are grouped into two categories, high-fired and low-fired and are also classified as being either northern or southern. Chinese porcelain is mainly made by china clay and pottery stones or a combination of the two.

Fragments of pottery vessels dating from 9000 BC found at the Xianrendong (Spirit Cave) site in Jiangxi Province represent the earliest Chinese ceramics. During the Sui and Tang periods, a wide range of ceramics was produced, including the well-known Tang lead-glazed sancai (three-color) wares, the high-firing, lime-glazed Yue (Guangdong Province) wares and low-fired wares from Changsha, Hunan Province. Sancai traveled along the Silk Road, to be later extensively used in Syrian and Italian pottery and became a popular style in Japanese and other East Asian ceramic arts.

Jingdezhen (Town of Jingde) in Jiangxi Province became the main production center for large-scale porcelain exports to Europe in1572 and has been termed the Porcelain Capital because of its production of quality china.