Han Taiwanese
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| c. 22.5 million | |
| Languages | |
| Taiwanese Mandarin, Taiwanese Minnan and Taiwanese Hakka | |
| Religion | |
| Taoism, Mahayana Buddhism, Christianity, Non-religious |
Han Taiwanese or Taiwanese Hans (Mandarin: 臺灣漢人) (also referred to as Taiwan Han Chinese) are Taiwanese people of Han Chinese (Mandarin: 漢人) descent, the largest ethnic group in the world. According to the Executive Yuan, Taiwan, Hans comprise 95 to 97 percent of the Taiwanese population, which also includes Austronesians and other non-Han people. Major waves of Han immigration occurred in the 17th to 19th centuries and between 1945 and 1949. Han Taiwanese mainly speak three languages: Mandarin, Minnan and Hakka.
There is no simple uniform definition of Han Taiwanese, which are estimated to comprise 95 to 98 percent of the Taiwanese population. To determine if a Taiwanese is Han, common criteria include immigration background (from continental East Asia), using a Han language as the mother tongue, and observance of traditional Han festivals. Sometimes a negative definition is employed, where Hans are those who are not certain non-Han people
Taiwanese Hans can be classified according to the times of migration or places of origin. They include the Taiwanese Minnan and Hakka people that arrived in Taiwan before World War II and the post-World War II Han immigrants. From the view that Taiwan is one of the "provinces" of Republic of China, the former, along with the Austronesians, are sometimes called benshengren (Mandarin: 本省人, literally "people of this province"), while the latter, along with the contemporaneous non-Han immigrants, are called waishengren (Mandarin: 外省人, literally "people from other provinces"). These two terms and distinctions are now less important due to intermarriages between different sub-populations of Taiwan and the rise of the Taiwanese identity. In addition, there are Han Taiwanese that do not fall into the above categories, including the Puxian-speaking Hans in Wuqiu Island, Kinmen County, the Mindong-speaking in Matzu, and various recent Han immigrants from China (forming part of the so-called "New Immigrants" (Mandarin: 新住民)).
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