Zaiwas are Kachins living mainly in Yunnan Province of the People's Republic of China and a few thousands in Sinli Manmaw (Bhamo). Zaiwa is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the southwest corner of Yunnan province in China, as well as in neighbouring parts of Burma. It is spoken by approximately 500,000 people. Burmese is the best known near-linguistic relative of Zaiwa. However, the closest linguistic relatives of Zaiwa are Achang, Maru and Lashi/Letsi/Lachit, which are unwritten, or have been so until recently. In recent years, a Zaiwa transliteration system has been created, which is now mainly used for primary school materials as well as for other publications.

Due to complicated historical factors which are as yet unclear, the speakers of different languages, i.e. Jinghpaw, Zaiwa, Maru and Lashi/Letsi/Lachit, and possibly some more minor languages such as Bola - but excluding Achang - appear to share a great deal of their culture and cohabit the same villages and cities. This all-encompassing ethnic is often referred to as Kachin or Jinghpaw (Jingpo in Chinese). Most of these people live in Burma, where the speakers of Jinghpaw are in the majority, and speakers of Zaiwa in the minority. Within China itself, however, the situation is reversed in that speakers of Zaiwa are the largest part of the official Jingpo minority group, whereas the ethnic Jinghpaw speakers form a minority. Nevertheless, Zaiwa speakers consider themselves to be Jinghpaw. Jinghpaw also means Human being. This situation has often baffled researchers, since Jinghpaw on one hand, and Zaiwa, Maru, Lashi/Letsi/Lachit and Bola on the other, belong to totally different branches of the Tibeto-Burman language family but Kachins themselves unite as one body so that no one can drive a wedge among them.

Zaiwas are considered to be the most educated people among the Kachins.  It's just a fact that Most of Zaiwas were born of leaders among the Kachins. It's because the Zaiwas dominated in most of the plain areas where they have chances to educate themselves and contact with different people around the world where as Jinghpaws and other people are occupying in hilly areas and have difficult chance to do as such.

Not much has been published on Zaiwa to date. The dissertation which is being written by Anton Lustig is the first full scale grammar of this language.