Many have remarked that the Sinitic ‘dialects’ are comparable to the Romance languages in terms of linguistic diversity. This thesis looks into this comparison through the areas of intelligibility, identity and synecdoche. In theory the Chinese dialects can be regarded as different languages because the linguistic criterion of abstand is met. This is supported by selected grammatical differences among the southern Chinese dialects of Min, Hakka and Yue, and a Dialect Intelligibility Test which investigates the degree of intelligibility among these three dialect groups and the role of grammatical diversity in relation to intelligibility. Despite such evidence, the Chinese ‘dialects’ retain this status  largely because a common identity of the Chinese prevails. In contrast, the Romance side shows the significance of identity in establishing language status. The two southern Romance varieties of Occitan and Catalan, though linked by a dialect continuum from French to Spanish and thus structurally close, have gained the status of languages, which implies a resolution to preserve a distinct entity. The mechanism of Synecdoche (Joseph 1982) sheds light on the Sinitic-Romance comparison. For Chinese, the synecdochic relationship between its standard language and its dialects extends to a grammatical level which is not paralleled in the Romance family. The status of the Chinese dialects is re-examined, with particular reference to the criteria of intelligibility and identity, and with implications for the status of Taiwanese Min.