| Greater China | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 大中華 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 大中华 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Inethnogeography, "Greater China" is a loosely defined term that refers to the region sharing cultural and economic ties with theChinese people, often used by international enterprises or organisations in unofficial usage.[1][2][3][4][failed verification] The notion contains a "great deal of ambiguity in its geographical coverage and politico-economic implications",[5] because some users use it to refer to "the commercial ties among ethnic Chinese, whereas others are more interested in cultural interactions, and still others in the prospects for political reunification".[6] The term encompass "linkages among regional Chinese communities",[7][8] but usually refers to an area encompassing thePeople's Republic of China (mainland China,Hong Kong,Macau) and theRepublic of China (known asTaiwan), places where the majority population is culturally Chinese.[9][10] Some analysts may also include places which have predominantlyethnic Chinese populations such asSingapore.[11]
The term's usage is contested; some observers in Taiwan characterise the term as harmful or a conflation of distinct polities and markets,[4] while the Chinese government has avoided it, either to allay fears of its economic expansionism or to avoid suggesting Taiwan (known as the Republic of China) and the People's Republic of China are on equal footing.[original research?] Chinese-Australian sinologistWang Gungwu has characterised the concept as a "myth", and "wrong" if applied tooverseas Chinese communities.[12]
Multinational corporations frequently use the term when naming theirheadquarters in the region. For example,Procter & Gamble uses the term to name its regional headquarters inGuangzhou that also operates inHong Kong andTaipei;[13]Apple Inc. uses it when referring to its regional headquarters inShanghai.[14][15]
The term is often used to avoid invoking sensitivities over thepolitical status of Taiwan.[16] Contrastingly, it has been used in reference toChinese irredentism innationalist contexts, such as the notion that China should reclaim its "lost territories" to create a Greater China.[17][18]
The term has been used for a long time, but with differing scopes and connotations.
During the 1930s,George Cressey, an American academic who did work for the US State Department throughout his career, used the term to refer to the entirety of the territory controlled by theQing dynasty, as opposed toChina proper.[19] Usage by the United States on government maps in the 1940s as a political term included territoriesclaimed by the Republic of China that were part of the previous Qing Empire, or geographically to refer to topographical features associated with China that may or may not have lain entirely within Chinese political borders.[19]
The concept began to appear again in Chinese-language sources in the late 1970s, referring to the growing commercial ties between the mainland and Hong Kong, with the possibility of extending these to Taiwan, with perhaps the first such reference being in a Taiwanese journalChangqiao in 1979.[19]
The English term subsequently re-emerged in the 1980s to refer to the growing economic ties between the regions as well as the possibility of political unification.[19] It is not an institutionalized entity such as theEU,ASEAN, orAU. The concept is a generalization to group several markets seen to be closely linked economically and does not implysovereignty.[16] The concept does not always include Taiwan, for instance Cisco uses "Greater China and Taiwan" to refer to the market.[20]
However, some analysts see the Greater China concept as a way to summarise 'the linkages among the fair-flung international Chinese community', thereby incorporating Singapore and overseas Chinese communities in their usage of the term (Harding 1993, 660; also see Wang 1993).
This term can be narrowly defined as referring to a geographic concept that consists of the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the Macau Special Administrative Region, where ethnic Chinese comprise the majority of the population. In this sense, the term is used to describe the ethnic and the associated political, economic and cultural ties among these Chinese societies (Harding 1993; Cheung 2013).
