History
The term was used at least as far back as the 1930s by George Cressey to refer to the entire Chinese Empire, as opposed to China proper. Usage by the United States on government maps in the 1940s as a political term included territories claimed by the Republic of China that were part of the previous empire, or geographically to refer to topographical features associated with China that may or may not have lain entirely within Chinese political borders. The concept began to appear again in Chinese-language sources in the late 1970s, referring 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 journal Changqiao in 1979. 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. The term was also "coined by Japanese economists to describe the increasing economic integration between China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan produced by globalization." It is not an institutionalized entity such as the EU or ASEAN. The concept is a generalization to group several markets seen to been closely linked economically and does not imply sovereignty.
Read more about this topic: Greater China
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