The Han Chinese are the largest ethnic group in the world, constituting roughly 90 percent of the population of mainland China and Taiwan and comprising, by most measures, the largest single ethnic group on Earth. Han identity encompasses substantial internal linguistic and regional diversity, including mutually unintelligible spoken varieties (Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Min, Hakka and others) unified by a shared written script and, for most of the group's history, a shared imperial Confucian bureaucratic and lineage-based social order. The scale and internal diversity of Han Chinese identity has made 'what unifies Han identity' a genuinely documented subject of scholarly discussion, generally resolved by reference to shared script, historical imperial administration and a common core of ancestral and cultural narrative rather than language alone.
Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own account Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountEast Asia (China, Taiwan, and a large global diaspora) 1 Population EstimateSourced to the subject's own accountapproximately 1.3 to 1.4 billion 1 Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own accountChinese languages (Mandarin as the standard, alongside Cantonese, Wu, Min and other varieties) 1 Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own accountHistorically agrarian (rice and wheat cultivation depending on region) with a long tradition of urban craft, commerce and bureaucratic administration. 1 Sources
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