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”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.