Han Taiwanese


Han Taiwanese, also known as Taiwanese Han, Taiwanese Han Chinese, or Han Chinese Taiwanese, are Taiwanese people of full or partial ethnic Han ancestry. According to the Executive Yuan of Taiwan, they comprise 95 to 97 percent of the Taiwanese population, which also includes Austronesians and other non-Han people. Major waves of Han immigration occurred since the 17th century to the end of Chinese Civil War in 1949, with the exception of the Japanese colonial period. Han Taiwanese mainly speak three Sinitic languages: Mandarin, Hokkien and Hakka.

Definition

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, using a Chinese language as their mother tongue, and observance of traditional Han festivals. Sometimes a negative definition is employed, where Han people are those who are not non-Han.
Taiwanese Han ethnic groups include the Hoklo people and Hakka people that had arrived in Taiwan before World War II, as well those and other Han people that arrived shortly after World War II. The distinction between benshengren and waishengren is now less important due to intermarriages and the rise of a Taiwanese identity. In addition, there are Han that do not fall into the above categories, including the Puxian-speaking people in Wuqiu Township, Kinmen County, the Mindong-speaking people in Matsu, and various newly arrived Han immigrants.
Those who trace their ancestry to Quanzhou and Zhangzhou from Fujian make up 70% of Taiwan's population. 15% originate from Longyan and Meixian from Fujian and Guangdong respectively whilst 12% come from other provinces from mainland China. The rest are either Taiwanese aborigines, ethnic minorities from mainland China or foreign spouses.

Genetics

There is a belief that modern Taiwanese Han are genetically different from Chinese Han, which has been used as a basis for Taiwanese independence from China. This belief has been called the "myth of indigenous genes" by some researchers such as Shu-juo Chen and Hong-kuan Duan, who say that "genetic studies have never supported the idea that Taiwanese Han are genetically different with Chinese Han." Some descendants of plains aborigines have opposed the usage of their ancestors in the call for Taiwanese independence. Genetic studies show genetic differences between Taiwanese Han and mountain aborigines. According to Chen and Duan, the genetic ancestry of individuals cannot be traced with certainty and attempts to construct identity through genetics are "theoretically meaningless." In the highest self reports, 5.3 percent of Taiwan's population claimed indigenous heritage.
Estimates of indigenous ancestry range from 13%, 26%, and as high as 85%. The latter number was published in a Chinese language editorial and not a peer-reviewed scientific journal, however these numbers have taken hold in popular Taiwanese imagination and are treated as facts in Taiwanese politics and identity. Many Taiwanese claim to be part aboriginal. Some Taiwanese graduate biology students expressed skepticism at the findings, noting the lack of peer-reviewed publications. Chen suggests that the estimates resulted from manipulation of sample sizes. The lack of methodological rigor suggests the numbers were meant for local consumption. In all scientific studies, genetic markers for aboriginal ancestry make up a minute portion of the genome. In 2021, who was the source of the larger indigenous ancestry numbers, co-authored an article stating that the East Asian and Austronesian ancestors of the Taiwanese Han and indigenous peoples mixed during the southward migration of East Asians 4,000 years ago, although recent admixtures cannot be ruled out. However, only one in five hundred Han Taiwanese individuals examined was genetically closer to the Dusun people, who are closer to the Taiwanese indigenous peoples than Sino-Tibetan populations, and there are "distinct patterns of genetic structure between the Taiwanese Han and indigenous populations." Taiwanese Han also cluster with Cantonese and Chinese Singaporeans the most out of the Sino-Tibetan-speaking groups, supporting the hypothesis that the admixture event occurred prior to the migration of Taiwanese Han to Taiwan.
Other studies show genetic affinities between Taiwanese Han and Kinh Vietnamese and also, genetic input from western Indonesians and other Mainland Southeast Asians, reflecting ancient trade.

Immigration history and demographics

There were two major waves of Han immigration: 1) during the Qing dynasty in the 18th and 19th centuries and 2) from Republic of China's mainland area, which is now ruled by the People's Republic of China, in the final years of the Chinese Civil War.

Before Imperial Japanese rule

Taiwan's southwest was home to a Chinese population numbering close to 1,500 before the Dutch first came in 1623. From 1624 to 1662, they began to encourage large-scale Han immigration to the island for labour, mainly from what is today south Fujian.
Starting from 1683, the Qing government limited immigration to Taiwan. Such restriction was relaxed following the 1760s, and by 1811 there were more than two million ethnic Chinese in Taiwan. The 1926 census counted 3,116,400 and 586,300 Han people originating from the Hok-kien and Kwang-tung provinces during the Ming or Qing dynasty.
Year168417641782181118401902192619441956
Population120,000666,210912,9201,944,7372,500,0002,686,3564,168,0006,269,9499,367,661

After World War II

Around 800,000 people, the vast majority being Han, immigrated to Taiwan after the end of the World War II, when Republic of China took over Taiwan, with the biggest wave taking place around the founding of the People's Republic of China on the mainland in 1949. Since the mid-1990s, there has been a small amount of Han immigration from the PRC into Taiwan. It mainly consists of two categories—brides of businessmen who work on the mainland, and women who have married rural Taiwanese, mostly through a marriage broker.
Around 20% or 34,000 of the Vietnamese people in Taiwan are Hoa people, people of Chinese origin that are mostly Han.

Interactions among Han immigrants

Qing dynasty

Conflicts

There were violent ethnic conflicts, which played a major role in determining the distribution of different groups of Han people in Taiwan. Most conflicts were between people of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou origins which includes acts where Quanzhang fought against Hakka peasants from the southwestern hills of Fujian throughout the period. and between people of Hokkien and Hakkas origins where Hoklo people united to fight against the Hakka who largely came from Guangdong and a minority from Fujian, is called.
Trying to be a mediator, Tēⁿ Iōng-sek, the first Taiwanese to achieve the highest degree, jinshi or "Doctor", in the imperial examination of the Qing dynasty, wrote an article On Reconciliation.

Cultural assimilation

In some regions, where the majority of the population spoke another language, the minority group sometimes adopted the more dominant language and lost their original language. This most commonly occurred with Hakka migrants, who adopted either Quanzhou or Zhangzhou Hokkien; they are referred to as "minnanized" Hakka people.

Republic of China

Unlike pre-World War II, when Han immigrants were predominantly of Hok-kien and Hakka origins, post-World War II Han people came from all over mainland China. Their different languages, habits, ideologies and relationships with the Republic of China government sometimes led to conflicts between these two groups.

Interactions with non-Han inhabitants

In Taiwan, the Han people came into contact with the Austronesians, Dutch, Spanish and Japanese.

Han people and Austronesians

The Amis term for Han people is payrag.
According to the historian Melissa J. Brown, within the Taiwanese Minnan community itself, differences in culture indicate the degree to which mixture with Austronesians took place, with most pure Hoklo Han in Northern Taiwan having almost no Austronesian admixture, which is limited to Hoklo Han in Southern Taiwan. Plains aborigines who were mixed and assimilated into the Hoklo Han population at different stages were differentiated between "short-route" and "long-route". The ethnic identity of assimilated Plains aboriginals in the immediate vicinity of Tainan was still known since a Taiwanese girl from an old elite Hoklo family was warned by her mother to stay away from them. The insulting name "番仔" was used against plains aborigines by the Taiwanese, and the Hoklo Taiwanese speech was forced upon Aborigines like the Pazeh people. Hoklo Taiwanese has replaced Pazeh and driven it to near extinction. Aboriginal status has been requested by plains aboriginals.

Biological traits and relationships with other Taiwanese/Asian people

Genetic relationships

Part of the maximum-likelihood tree of 75 Asian populations:

Alcohol metabolism

In Taiwan, the prevalence of alcohol dependence among the Han is 10 times lower than that of Austronesians, which is related to genetic, physical, psychological, social, environmental, and cultural factors. An association study by researchers at the Academia Sinica found that genes in alcohol metabolism pathway, especially ADH1B and ALDH2, conferred the major genetic risk for alcohol dependence in Taiwanese Han men.

Languages

The languages used by Han Taiwanese include Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka, Mindong, Puxian, and other Han languages spoken by some post-World War II immigrants or immigrants from mainland China since the 1990s. The writing systems used include Han characters, Han phonetic notations such as Mandarin Phonetic Symbols for Mandarin and Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols for Hokkien and Hakka, and the Latin alphabet for various romanization systems, including Tongyong Pinyin, Wade–Giles, Gwoyeu Romatzyh and Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II for Mandarin, POJ and Taiwanese Minnan Romanization System for Hokkien, and Hakka Romanization System for Hakka.
Significant numbers of Puxian Min, Fuzhounese, and Teochew speakers came to Taiwan proper, but they were eventually assimilated into the Hokkien speaking population.