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.
Descendants of these early immigrants now make up about 70% of the population. Most speak Hokkien (known as Taiwanese), and are part of the 49 million Hokkien-speaking Chinese people worldwide.
Another 10% of the population speak Hakka. They also migrated from China.
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.”
Most of Taiwan’s Hokkien 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.