Talk:Han Chinese

The text in the DNA analyis is misleading

"Despite this, tests comparing the genetic profiles of northern Han, southern Han and southern natives determined that haplogroups O1b-M110, O2a1-M88 and O3d-M7, which are prevalent in southern natives, were only observed in some southern Hans (4% on average), but not in northern Hans. "

This would imply the paternal contribution of southern natives is only 4% when this is far from the truth. Y-DNA O1 (all subclades) is very common in (and perhaps more associated with) Dai populations. It is also very common in southern Chinese. Y-DNA O-P201 is very common in southern natives and is very common in Guangdong. There are many subclades of Y-DNA O1, O2 and O3 shared by both Dai and Han alike. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]}

The number of speakers derived from statistics or estimates (2019) and were rounded:^[1][2][3]

@Remsense: So what's your issue? Is it just the listing templates? Is that your only problem? It's just the formatting? AHI-3000 (talk) 01:41, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

That is most of it. I am also unsure about what we're including and omitting in this infobox but I'll leave that be until I triple check the sources. Remsense ‥ 论 01:42, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

There needs to be a discussion opened for criticisms of the generosity, both historical and modern, of the classification of Han Chinese in it's usage as both as a racial and an ethnic classifier. The genetics page serves to further this conflation by premise, and some sections perpetuate a very dangerous narrative that the Han Chinese ethnic classifier is concordant with that of the Han Chinese racial classifier, which the article is not about.

Within the sentence heading the section is this quote: "The internal genetic structure of the Han Chinese is consistent with the vast geographical expanse of China and the recorded history of large migratory waves over the past several millennia have engendered the emergence of the diverse Han subgroups displaying slight but discernible physical and physiological differences." This statement should be looked at under extreme scrutiny as it positions itself such that being Han is symbol of racial purity that is "endangered"(threatened) by "migratory waves"(race mixing). If we were saying this about the similar classifier, "white", then this would be the exact same logic used by the Nuremberg Laws. This position is further substantiated by the classifier of Han as "displaying slight... differences."(shortened for brevity) By what metric are these differences 'slight'? I would hope we are not defaulting to conflating apparently similar aesthetic complexion with racial genetics.

The nature of the article should necessitate a, currently totally absent, discussion on the application of the ethnic quantifier. Han has been used numerous times in history, from the Han dynasties themselves to the Yuan Great Ming to the Qing to the Republican Era to the PRC, as a valuable tool for political populism and ideological unification to justify anything from the overthrow of foreign dynastic rule to the Cultural Revolution. This is a vitally important perspective to give in order to understand the goals of the classifier and why it is so magnanimous as to include 1.4 billion people.

For brevity I will not expand upon similar errors on this article, but I assure all readers that they are littered throughout it in varying degrees("Similarly, the Chinese language also came to be named and alluded to as the "Han language" (漢語; 汉语; Hànyǔ) ever since", the "Chinese language" does not exist, I assume we are referring to Modern Standard Chinese; 现代标准汉语).

The lack of such important discussion on the page itself indicates to me that this article was formulated and is structured with certain biases that are not appropriate to Wikipedia. I will try to help fix such errors, but it will take the effort of more than one person. Hrafnagyðja (talk) 14:20, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

Furthering this, I would like to point out that the "History" section is largely irrelevant to that of the Han Chinese. This section should be trimmed when possible to include important events not in the general history of China but only what specifically relates to the Han people, if for nothing else then for the sake of avoiding redundancy as this information is more relevant and accessible and researched in other articles. I have decided to not take this action up myself for the sake of perspective.

I believe more should be included about the historical classification of Han itself, which is relevant to understanding the reasons why the Han Chinese classification seems so paradoxical to begin with. Further, the history of it's usage as seen from the Western perspective would be a nice section. Hrafnagyðja (talk) 00:39, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

The current infobox image is pretty terrible. It is a low-quality, watermarked photo of a worn painting of unknown provenance (the Commons source link goes to...a WeChat group?). Most ethnic group infoboxes have a photograph of an actual person. This page should be no exception. Toadspike [Talk] 14:46, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

@ChenDaoIsHere recently tried changing it to the collage used on zhwiki, which was admittedly excessive and contains far too many apocryphal paintings of ancient figures, but that was kinda the right idea. Toadspike [Talk] 14:48, 29 December 2025 (UTC)