- published: 26 May 2016
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Han Chinese or Han People (simplified Chinese: 汉族 or 汉人; traditional Chinese: 漢族 or 漢人; pinyin: hànzú or hànrén) are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.
Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China (mainland China), 98% of the population of the Republic of China (Taiwan), 74% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the entire global human population, making it the largest ethnic group in the world. There is considerable genetic, linguistic, cultural, and social diversity among the subgroups of the Han, mainly due to thousands of years of immigration and assimilation of various regional ethnicities and tribes within China. The Han Chinese are a subset of the Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu). Sometimes Han and other Chinese refer to themselves as the "Descendants of the Yan and Huang Emperors" (simplified Chinese: 炎黄子孙; traditional Chinese: 炎黃子孫).
The name Han comes from the Han Dynasty, which succeeded the short-lived Qin Dynasty that united China. The Han Dynasty's first emperor was originally known as the king of the region of 'Han Zhong' 漢中, which is where the word is derived. Han, as a word in ancient China, especially in classical literary Chinese, can also mean the Milky Way, or as people in ancient China called it, the "Heavenly River" (天河 Tian He).