Chinese Australians
As a whole, Australian residents identifying themselves as having Chinese ancestry made up 5.6% of those nominating their ancestry at the 2016 census and numbered 1,213,903. At the 2016 census, 509,555 people declared that they were born in Mainland China, 86,886 declared that they were born in Hong Kong, while 46,882 declared that they were born in Taiwan. There are also a large number of persons of Chinese ancestry among those born in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Taiwanese Australians
Taiwanese Australians are Australian citizens or permanent residents of ethnic Taiwanese descent. Alternatively, a Taiwanese Australian can merely be an Australian who possesses dual Australian and Republic of China (ROC) citizenship. Although Taiwan is not synonymous with the Republic of China and is actually a distinct entity, Taiwan constitutes 99 per cent of the ROC's territory. Therefore, due to "pars pro toto", Taiwan is a nickname commonly used in place of 'the Republic of China', in order to distinguish the country from the better-known People's Republic of China (PRC), aka 'China' or 'Mainland China'.