ABSTRACT
An emerging economic community has already been established among China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong known as Greater China. Nevertheless, the extensiveness of China's economic role, especially in the East Asian region, is restricted by competition with Japan in developing regional leadership, given the Japanese security alliance with the US and the established "network power" with East Asian countries. Culturally speaking, Greater China can be more broadly defined to include many economic, cultural, and social activities among Southeast Asian countries, especially in the constitution of network-building and social capital formation. This chapter demonstrates that the social interactions among the People's Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong, and Taiwan act more interactively according to the general public's social and economic experiences. It refers more to the political relations across the Strait. To conclude, the implication of "the rise of China" is that it becomes a center of gravity for the political economy with Hong Kong and Taiwan.
