的: 's or of?

[kavanin]

I was fairly in good terms with 的, meaning 's, until now (as it's used exactly the same way in this sense in Turkish, my native language). But here is an example sentence (and it was actually about using approximate numbers):

百分之九十四五的中国人是汉族。

It seems to me that it's used as English "of", "94-95% of Chinese people" (opposite to what I have learned so far) or I completely misunderstand. I could bet it would be 中国人的百分之九十四五, but it isn't, is it?

BTW, do I understand the percentage correctly, the actual purpose of the example?

[daofeishi]

百分之九十四五的中国人是汉族 means "94-95% of the Chinese are Han Chinese." "中国人的百分之九十四五是汉族" would be ungrammatical. (You could say 汉族占中国人口的95%, but that is a different structure.)

的 is a subordinating word that has a lot of grammatical functions. X的Y can mean

X's Y or (the) Y of X: 我的汽车，他的妻子, 饭馆的后门, 汽车的轮子

but it can also mean

(the) Y that (is/are) X: 没有钱的人, 高兴的孩子，主张社会主义的领导人

In the example above, you can think of it as the second case. “百分之九十四五的” becomes an attribute that means something like "belonging to the 94th to 95th percentile." Have an open mind. You'll find as you progress that it will be difficult to provide a one-to-one correspondence between grammatical structures in your own language and in Chinese.

[populo]

"中国人的百分之九十四五"----Chinese people seldem say in that way.Occasionally, they may say "中国人中的百分之九十五“，this sentence emphasizes the proportion, but generally speaking, they are likely to say 百分之九十五的中国人

[aifeluna]

it could be both.