The traditional questions in Australian censuses on religion and birthplace present only limited problems of interpretation. Many states have changed their boundaries over time, most recently those previously making up the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Thus most of those categorised as 'Austrians' in pre-1914 censuses were of Croatian ethnicity and came from the Austrian-ruled Dalmatian coast. Other subject areas, such as Poland or Ukraine, appear as birthplaces because respondents have declared them as such. Birthplace data is not a substitute for ethnicity data. Most Italians in Australia were born in Italy, but many Greeks were born outside Greece, for example. The majority of Chinese Australians were not born in China but in Hong Kong or other South East Asian states.