Background The survival benefits of adjuvant chemotherapy for stage IB non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remain controversial. The existing evidence is mostly based on the Caucasian population, especially the differences in efficacy among different races are not yet clear. Method Based on the data of patients with stage T2N0M0 NSCLC in the SEER database from 2010 to 2018 (n = 7458), they were divided into white people (6076 cases) and non-white people (1382 cases).