This is a highly readable book about the emerging economic complex of “Greater China.” The author, based at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is the foremost authority on the subject matter. The book, which culminates from well over a decade of painstaking research and publication, traces the process and pattern of economic integration among the Chinese trio – the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan – over the past two decades or so. The analysis is set against the broader background of Chinese economic reforms and opening to the West, as well as the changing political context in East Asia that has facilitated increased economic interaction in the region.

The book starts with a broad description of the economic structure and relative economic strengths of the Chinese trio, and furnishes a useful conceptual framework for understanding the evolving economic relationships. Chapter two shows how FDI (foreign direct investment) from Hong Kong and Taiwan has triggered an accelerated process of integration with the mainland, and as a result led to the drastic expansion of China's external trade. Chapter three examines the particular characteristics of economic integration between Hong Kong and the mainland on the one hand, and between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait on the other hand. It reveals how cultural (affinity) and geographical (proximity) factors have played a role, and what policy readjustments have been made in the three constituent parts of the “China circle” to bring about a “new brand of ‘new-style’ economic integration,” which is unique in the global context of trade and investment liberalization.