The Shatuo, or the Shatuo Turks were a Turkic tribe that heavily influenced northern Chinese politics from the late ninth century through the tenth century. They are noted for founding three, Later Tang, Later Jin, and Later Han, of the five dynasties and one, Northern Han, of the ten kingdoms during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The Northern Han would later be conquered by the Song dynasty. Sometime before the 12th century, the Shatuo disappeared as a distinct ethnic group, many of them having become acculturated and assimilating into the general population around them.

The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period was an era of political upheaval and division in Imperial China from 907 to 979. Five dynastic states quickly succeeded one another in the Central Plain, and more than a dozen concurrent dynastic states, collectively known as the Ten Kingdoms, were established elsewhere, mainly in South China. It was a prolonged period of multiple political divisions in Chinese imperial history.