The earliest inhabitants of Taiwan were of Malayo-Polynesian descent. Today, these aboriginal peoples only comprise 2% of the population.

The rest of Taiwan’s population is of Han Chinese descent. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, throngs of people from China’s Fujian province immigrated to Taiwan. These immigrants settled in the western coast and forced the plains tribes to adopt Chinese language and customs. Other tribes were driven into the mountains where they maintained their traditional customs.

Most of these immigrants and their descendants speak Hokkien (known as Taiwanese). They are part of the 49 million Hokkien-speaking Chinese people worldwide. About 15% of the early immigrants were Hakka speakers. Descendants of these early immigrants now make up about 85% of the population.

A final wave of immigration from China came between 1949, when Chiang Kai Shek and his Nationalist army fled from the Communists to Taiwan. Now, about 15% of Taiwan’s people can trace their ancestry to this migration. They are Mandarin-speaking and are considered “Mainlanders.”

The official language of Taiwan is Mandarin but most people speak a mix of both Mandarin and Taiwanese, favoring one or the other depending on family background and context.

Most of Taiwan’s Taiwanese and Hakka speakers are working class. They work in factories, run small shops or restaurants, or offer various services (car repair, hair cutting, taxi driving, etc.). Many have only achieved junior-high or high-school level education. Their earnings tend to be significantly less than those of more highly educated workers, who are mostly speak Mandarin. They also tend to hold more strongly to traditional Chinese religions.