Taiwan: Encyclopedia II - Taiwan - Demographics

Taiwan - Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Taiwan

ROC's population was estimated in 2005 as being 22.9 million, most of which are on Taiwan. About 98 percent of the population is of Han Chinese ethnicity. Of these people, 84 percent are descendants of early Han immigrants known as native Taiwanese (c: 本省人; p: Bensheng ren; lit. "home-province person"). This group contains two subgroups. The first subgroup is the Southern Fujianese (70 percent of the total population), who migrated from the coastal Southern Fujian region in the southeast of mainland China. The second subgroup is the Hakka (15 percent of the total population), who originally migrated south to Guangdong, its surrounding areas and Taiwan, intermarrying extensively with Taiwanese aborigines. The remaining 14 percent of Han Chinese are known as Mainlanders (外省人; Waisheng ren; lit. "external-province person") and are composed of and descend from immigrants who arrived after the Second World War. This group fled mainland China in 1949 following the Nationalist defeat in the Chinese Civil War. Dalu ren (大陸人) refers to residents of Mainland China. This group excludes almost all Taiwanese, including the Mainlanders, except recent immigrants from mainland China, such as those made Republic of China citizens through marriage.

The other 2 percent of Taiwan's population, numbering about 440,000, are the Taiwanese aborigines (原住民; yuánzhùmín; lit. "original inhabitants"), divided into 12 major groups: Ami, Atayal, Paiwan, Bunun, Puyuma, Rukai, Tsou, Saisiyat, Yami, Thao, Kavalan and Taroko.

Taiwan - Languages

Almost everyone on Taiwan born after the early 1950s can speak Mandarin, which was forced on the mainly Taiwanese/Japanese speaking population in a heavy-handed way, when the KMT came to Taiwan. It became the official language of Taiwan, via the Republic of China, and has been the medium of instruction in the schools for more than four decades. Under KMT rule, Taiwanese was forbidden from the airwaves and in official situations, and students received corporal punishment, as they did for many other infractions, for speaking Taiwanese, Hakka, or Aboriginal languages in school.

Today, non-Mandarin native languages have undergone a revival in Taiwan. A large fraction of people speak Taiwanese, a variant of Min-nan, and a majority understand it. A large proportion speak Hakka, which has a distinct Hakka language/dialect. Between 1900 and 1945, Japanese was the medium of instruction, and many Taiwanese educated during that period can speak fluent Japanese. All Taiwanese schools today teach English, resulting in a trilingual population, many of whom speak even more languages, though the average student rarely reaches fluency. Chinese romanization on Taiwan uses both Tongyong pinyin, which the national government officially has adopted, and Hanyu pinyin, which some localities use. Wade-Giles, used traditionally, also is found. Mayor Ma Ying-jeou recently changed all Taipei street names to the Hanyu form, although most romanizations in other cities still are in Tongyong and addresses are generally written in Tongyong. Most aboriginal groups in Taiwan have their own languages, and unlike Taiwanese or Hakka, do not belong to the Chinese language family, but rather belong to the Austronesian language family.

Mandarin is still the languge of instruction in schools and predominate television and airwaves.

Taiwan - Religion

About half of the ROC population is religious, and most of these people identify themselves as Buddhists or Taoists. Belief in folk religion also is prevalent, and many people practice some combination of these three faiths. Confucianism is also an honored school of thought and ethical code. Christian churches have been active on Taiwan for many years; a majority of these churches are Protestant, with Presbyterians playing a particularly significant role.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Demographics", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki