ABSTRACT
However, the idea of Greater China as a topic of discussion, and hence the term, came into common use only in the 1980s, and no consistent or commonly accepted definition evolved. In fact, it had various meanings. To the layman, when the term ‘Greater China’ was used without a special referent, intent or argument, it usually meant the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan or the Republic of China (ROC) and Singapore: the five political entities in the world with a majority Chinese population.2 Recently, the number has been reduced to three, according to some writers, because the former British Crown Colony of Hong Kong was returned to the PRC in 1997, and the Portuguese colony of Macau was reunified with the PRC in 1999. Still, Greater China is frequently considered as having five members, since Hong Kong and Macau have been designated as having a kind of special autonomy within the PRC and in some important ways (economically, politically and legally) are different from the rest of the PRC.3 Greater China is often taken to include the overseas Chinese (or hua qiao)4 although sometimes this means only those living in Southeast Asia, where the majority of Chinese outside the five political entities reside (Shambaugh 1995:274-5).5 Occasionally, writers discriminate between overseas Chinese who retain Chinese citizenship and those who do not and include only the former (ibid: 275).
