page_title: Han Chinese
section_title: Distribution
hierarchical_section_title: Han Chinese / Distribution
caption_attribution_description: Translation of Chinese map of Mandarin dialect groups, based on Language Atlas of China, by Stephen Adolphe Wurm, Rong Li, Theo Baumann and Mei W. Lee, Longman, 1987, ISBN 978-962-359-085-3.
context_page_description: The Han Chinese, Hanzu, or Han people are an East Asian ethnic group and nation, historically native to the Yellow River Basin region of modern China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the global population and consisting of various subgroups speaking distinctive varieties of Chinese languages. The estimated 1.4 billion Han Chinese people world-wide are mostly concentrated in mainland China, where they make up about 92% of the total population. In Taiwan, they make up about 97% of the population. People of Han Chinese descent also make up around 75% of the total population of Singapore.
  The Han Chinese trace a common ancestry to the Huaxia, a name for the initial confederation of agricultural tribes living along the Yellow River. The term Huaxia represents the collective Neolithic confederation of agricultural tribes Hua and Xia who settled along the Central Plains around the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River in Northern China. The tribes were the ancestors of the modern Han Chinese people that gave birth to Chinese civilization.
caption: The eight main dialect areas of Mandarin in Mainland China
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