Liang, known in historiography as the Western Liang, was a dynastic state of China listed as one of the Sixteen Kingdoms. The Western Liang was founded by the Li family of Han descent. The founder of the Tang dynasty, Li Yuan, traced his patrilineal ancestry to the Western Liang rulers and traced the ancestry of the Western Liang rulers to Li Guang and Laozi in the paternal line. The ruling Li clan of the Western Liang was known as the Longxi Li lineage.

The Sixteen Kingdoms, less commonly the Sixteen States, was a chaotic period in Chinese history from AD 304 to 439 when northern China fragmented into a series of short-lived dynastic states. The majority of these states were founded by the "Five Barbarians", non-Han peoples who had settled in northern and western China during the preceding centuries, and had launched a series of rebellions against the Western Jin dynasty in the early 4th century. However, several of the states were founded by the Han people, and all of the states—whether ruled by Xiongnu, Xianbei, Di, Jie, Qiang, Han, or others—took on Han-style dynastic names. The states frequently fought against both one another and the Eastern Jin dynasty, which succeeded the Western Jin in 317 and ruled southern China. The period ended with the unification of northern China in 439 by the Northern Wei, a dynasty established by the Xianbei Tuoba clan. This occurred 19 years after the Eastern Jin collapsed in 420, and was replaced by the Liu Song dynasty. Following the unification of the north by Northern Wei, the Northern and Southern dynasties era of Chinese history began.