The post-Cold War world is witnessing the reconfiguration of international relations with the emergence of new actors and relationships on the world stage. These new actors and patterns of relations are reshaping the familiarities of the post-war era. As the new millennium approaches, one has the sense that the world is in transition from one epoch to another. Among the new realities of our era is the emergence of “Greater China.”

The world is suddenly talking about the emergence of “Greater China.” The term has appeared in the headlines of major newspapers and magazines, has been the topic of conferences sponsored by prominent think-tanks, and is now the theme of a special issue of the world's leading journal of Chinese affairs. It thus joins other phrases – “the new world order,” “the end of history,” “the Pacific Century” and the “clash of civilizations” – as part of the trendiest vocabulary used in discussions of contemporary global affairs.

Greater China refers in the first instance to the close economic ties of trade, technology transfers and investment that have emerged since the second half of the 1980s linking Taiwan and Hong Kong with the rapid development of southern China. But it also suggests that the economic links are buttressed by familial, social, historical and cultural ties of a peculiarly Chinese kind. These ties and links have developed between different Chinese communities whose political divergences had until recently precluded such a development. Consequently the emergence of Greater China poses new challenges and opportunities to the political identities of its three constituent members and to the conduct of relations between them. Greater China and its possible future trajectory affects and is also affected by the rest of the Asia-Pacific region including the major powers of the United States and Japan as well as those in the immediate vicinity of South-east Asia.

Economic integration is essentially a process of unification – the means whereby coherence is imposed upon previously separate, even disparate, geographical regions. It may be pursued as a domestic or international goal, although the simultaneous attainment of both may prove elusive. Recent efforts towards the creation of formal trans-national, regional economic identities, whether North American (NAFTA), European (EC) or Asian-Pacific (APEC), have sometimes been perceived as a threat to the establishment of a truly integrated global economy. By contrast, the remarkable degree of economic integration already achieved between southern China and Hong Kong (and, latterly, Taiwan) might ironically have a fissiparous effect on China's domestic economy. From this point of view, there is a danger that increasing economic integration within Greater China could threaten China's national economic identity, or at least compel its re-definition.

The Asia-Pacific region, and particularly its East Asian core, has achieved an impressive record of growth, export expansion and regional economic integration that now spans more than three decades and a wide variety of world economic environments. A key indicator of these achievements is the changing level of intra-regional foreign trade. This indicator is positive for the region as a whole over the period, although trends since 1980 are quite sensitive to the precise definition of the region employed. However, for the NICs (Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore) and the ASEAN group (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philip-pines and Brunei) in isolation, intra-regional trade increased by approximately 25 per cent over the decade 1980–1990.

The brutality of the 4 June 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown ordered by Beijing quickly checked the former growing “mainland fever” among the inhabitants of Taiwan. It seemed that, with their aspiration to reunify with the People's Republic of China shattered forever, Taiwan's expanding non-governmental interactions with the mainland would cease indefinitely. Yet, on 5 July, 76 Taiwanese businessmen crossed the Taiwan Strait to attend an export commodities fair in Dalian. There, one Taiwanese visitor even made an investment of US$5 million.

Samuel P. Huntington categorized Taiwan's path to democracy as “transformation,” by which he meant that “the elites in power took the lead in bringing about democracy.” The ruling Kuomintang (KMT) would agree with this explanation, although the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which was established in 1986 in defiance of martial law, would argue that Taiwan's liberalization and democratization was carried out through a process of transplacement, in which “democratization resulted largely from the joint action by government and opposition groups”.

On 1 July 1997, Hong Kong, the only significant remaining part of the British Empire, will revert to China. In the same year India, once the jewel in that crown and whose emancipation marked the beginning of the end, will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its independence. History will record that for the latter part of these five decades the economic development of Hong Kong was, compared to other former British territories, spectacular. Once Hong Kong had overcome the challenge of the mass influx of refugees following the Chinese civil war, which endured for almost two of the five decades, its subsequent development, measured in material terms, was exemplary. No matter what the challenge, the Hong Kong population rose to it. Yet, compared to India and other parts of the former empire, its government until the eve of the reversion remained, judged by recognized criteria, “undemocratic” and unrepresentative, executive-led, and based on a colonial form of constitution.

In 1983 when The China Quarterly published a special issue on Hong Kong, I attempted to synthesize the history of its urban social life, coining the term “Hong Kong Man” to describe what I considered to be the emergence of an identifiable unique social animal. Hong Kong Man, I suggested, was neither Chinese nor British. I characterized him as quick-thinking, flexible, tough for survival, excitement-craving, sophisticated in material tastes, and self-made in a strenuously competitive world. He operated in the context of a most uncertain future, control over which was in the hands of others, and for this as well as for historical reasons he lived “life in the short term”.

Macau was the first port on the China coast to come under the influence of a foreign power and will be the last to return to Chinese sovereignty. Its historical importance in the early transmission of culture between East and West is well known. After reaching its height as the centre of such contact in the second half of the 16th century Macau, like Portugal, languished in international affairs albeit with subsequent brief periods of relative importance.

Trying to puzzle out the Communist leadership's reaction to the massive demonstrations then under way during the spring of 1989, some Chinese wits turned to “Go With Your Feelings,” a well-known song recorded by the Taiwan pop singer Su Rui. This not only indicated the critical role of one often unpredictable octogenarian, it also revealed the pervasiveness of popular culture from “peripheral China” on the mainland core: an allusion to a pop song from Taiwan could be used (and understood) to sum up an extremely volatile situation. As the economies of the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan move toward increased integration, with Hong Kong and Taiwan supplying the dynamism and the mainland the market, a comparable trend is emerging in the cultural realm: popular culture from Hong Kong and Taiwan is claiming a substantial share of the market and loyalties of mainland consumers. Furthermore, it is redefining the essence of what it means to be a “modern” Chinese at the end of the 20th century, and popularizing a new language for expressing individual sentiments.

Some of the most important developments of the last quarter of the century have taken place in the Asia-Pacific region. Of these, the Chinese shift from Communist ideology and central planning to a commitment to build a market economy has had extensive ramifications. These have led to much speculation about the re-emergence of China as a powerful actor in world politics. The idea of Greater China is one of the products of that speculation. The lack of precision in the term “Greater China” – whether it should cover Hong Kong-Macao (hereafter Hong Kong), Taiwan and all of the People's Republic of China (PRC) or only parts of it – should not prevent it being used to explore some current and future developments. In this article, which examines the impact the concept of Greater China has on the Chinese overseas, the term would obviously not include those Chinese who live outside. Nevertheless, depending on which aspect is emphasized, the actual area covered can be significant.

In the course of the 20th century, the world's inhabitants have shared one fate in common. Sooner or later, they and their society have been plunged into the maelstrom of accelerating change, an upheaval at the root of which are the explosive developments in science and technology. The global revolution has unfolded in different ways, and has had diverse ideological underpinnings, structural attributes and institutional foundations. Other variables of great significance are timing and leadership. The timing of the revolutionary effort together with the stage of preparation on the part of the society involved have had a major influence in determining the degree of coercion likely to be employed. If a reluctant, ill-prepared society is pulled into modernity largely against its will, significant force has often been required, although the creation of a new faith through intensive ideological indoctrination has reduced the quotient of coercion in certain instances. Timing has also determined the develop-mental models available as well as the prevailing ideological currents, and hence the influences likely to carry the greatest weight with elites committed to change.