Hakka people

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Hakka

客家 Hak-kâ 客家漢族[1]
Hakka dancers performing traditional Qilin dance in Malaysia
Total population
80 million[2]
Regions with significant populations
China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, Europe, Americas
Languages
Hakka Chinese Standard Chinese Taiwanese Hokkien Taiwanese Mandarin Cantonese
Religion
Chinese folk religion, Confucianism, Taoism, Mahayana Buddhism, Christianity, Islam

The Hakka (Chinese: 客家), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han,^[1][3] or Hakka Chinese,^[4] or Hakkas, are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka Chinese-speaking areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhejiang, Hainan, and Guizhou in China, as well as in Taoyuan City, Hsinchu County, Miaoli County, Pingtung County, and Kaohsiung City in Taiwan. Unlike other Han Chinese subgroups, the Hakkas are not named after a geographical region, e.g. a province, county or city, in China. That is because their origins were of northern Chinese refugees fleeing social unrest, upheaval and invasions throughout the northern parts of China (such as Gansu and Henan) throughout history who then sought sanctuary in the south where the Cantonese-speaking provinces such as Guangdong and Guangxi are. The Chinese characters for Hakka (客家) literally mean "guest families".^[5] The word is Cantonese in origin and as the name implies, they are the guest of the Cantonese people. Over the centuries though, they have since more or less assimilated with the Cantonese-speaking population. Modern day Hakka are generally identified by both full Hakka and by different degrees of Hakka ancestry and usually speak Hakka Chinese.

The Hakkas are thought to have originated from the central plains.^[6] Genetic studies have shown that the Hakka people are largely descended from North Han Chinese.^[7] In a series of migrations, the Hakkas moved and settled in their present areas in South China and from there, substantial numbers migrated overseas to various countries throughout the world.^[8] As the most diasporic among the Chinese community groups, the worldwide population of Hakkas (including in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) is about 80 million to 120 million.^[2] The Hakkas moved from Central China into Southern China at a time when the earlier Han Chinese settlers who already lived there had developed cultural identities and languages distinctive from Hakkas. The Tunbao and Chuanqing people are other Han Chinese subgroups that migrated from possibly somewhere in Central or Eastern China to Southwestern China while maintaining their ancestral traditions which differentiated them from the native Chinese people.

The Hakka people have had a significant influence on the course of modern Chinese and overseas Chinese history; in particular, they have been a source of many government and military leaders—in 1984, over half of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo were Hakka.^[9]

The Hakka language is the most closely related to Gan and is sometimes classified as a variety of Gan, with a few northern Hakka varieties even being partially mutually intelligible with southern Gan. There are also some studies that consider Hakka people and Gan people have related genetics and shared areal features.^[10] Today, Hakka is one of the official languages of Taiwan.^[11] But like other official languages such as Hokkien and Formosan languages, they do not have the de facto special status of Taiwanese Mandarin.