They is the third-person plural pronoun in Chinese, used to refer to a group of people (or sometimes animals) that are masculine or mixed-gender. It is formed by adding the plural suffix 们 (men) to the singular pronoun 他 (tā), meaning 'he'. Unlike English, Chinese does not distinguish gender in plural pronouns — 他们 covers both all-male and male-plus-female groups. The suffix 们 cannot be used with most other nouns (e.g., *学生们 is acceptable in informal speech but *桌子们 is ungrammatical); it’s restricted mainly to pronouns and a small set of human nouns.

This pronoun carries no honorific or formal connotation — it’s neutral and widely used in spoken and written Mandarin. Note that 他们 is never used for all-female groups; that requires 她们 (tā men). Also, 他们 can occasionally refer to animals when the context clearly personifies them (e.g., pets in stories), but this is stylistic rather than grammatical.