ABSTRACT
Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are the three Overseas Chinese societies on the fringe of the Mainland which have each experienced spectacular economic growth as newly industrialised economies (NIEs) of East Asia. In spite of their common Confucian heritage and signs of mutual institutional convergence, we will argue in this chapter that there are visible diversities which make each distinctive in their cultural, socio-political, economic and management systems. A salient source of these differences, we go on to suggest, is in the final analysis historical. Both Hong Kong and Macau were under colonial rule, until the PRC promulgated the novel political formula of ‘one country, two systems’ in the 1980s to pave the way for their reunification in 1997 and 1999. The legacies left behind by the British on Hong Kong are evidently different from the Portuguese influences which envelop Macau. Conversely, the mixed imprints of successive regimes of the Dutch, Japanese and Americans in Taiwan have converted it into a hybrid society which now yearns for an identity of its own, as epitomised by the contest between the bid for independence and the sentiments of reintegration with the Mainland.
