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.

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.

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.”

Perhaps never in human history has an established society gone through such a total transformation, without a war, violent revolution or economic collapse, as did China with the ending of Mao Zedong's reign and the emergence of Deng Xiaoping as paramount ruler. The leitmotiv of Mao's China was orthodoxy, conformity and isolation, a whole people walking in lock-step, seemingly with only one voice, repeating one mindless slogan after another. All Chinese appeared to be united in a state of egalitarian autarky. To have read one newspaper was to have read them all, to have heard one official's briefing was to have heard them all. In amazing contrast, Deng's China was a congeries of elements, not an integrated system at all, with regional differences suddenly surfacing, some urban centres vibrating to the currents of international commerce, its youth in tune with the latest foreign fashions, while the great rural masses were re-establishing bonds with their ancient folk cultures, and nearly everybody rejoicing over the ending of Maoist orthodoxy and politics by mass campaigns. Above all, economics and politics seemed to be adhering to different rules, so that there was openness here, controls there. All the different voices saying different things made it hard to hear any one authority giving vision and guidance. And as the people scram-bled to look after their private selves, corruption seeped in, and while the government did not seem really to expect people to obey all its orders, it also acted erratically, sometimes with cruel violence – a “fragmented authoritarian” system in Kenneth Lieberthal's well–chosen words.