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By investigating how Taiwanese business people and their families establish and negotiate their privileged transnational capitalist class status and interest in coastal Chinese economic zones, this paper concerns with the formation of a transnational capitalist class in the process of the global economy. Since the early 1990s, Taiwan has become one of the major foreign investors in China. As a result, a large number of Taiwanese business investors and managerial professionals have worked and resided in China. This paper analyzes how the daily arrangements of food, social space, maid services, language, transportation, network and factory management are the crucial sites in which Taiwanese construct and maintain their relatively economic position of advantage in China. I focus on those moments, processes and strategies that produced and negotiate the class meaning, boundary, and relation between Taiwanese business people and the Chinese within specific cross-Strait political economy. I conclude this paper with three points. First, the process of constituting a transnational Taiwanese capitalist class in China is socially situated within the contexts of cross-Strait economy and politics, and within the different social and geographical locations in China. Second, Taiwanese business people?s negative perceptions and assumptions of Chinese women and men as social and economic Others set up the cultural foundation for them to construct difference and the relations of domination between themselves and the Chinese. Finally, the process of establishing and maintaining specific patterns of transnational Taiwanese capitalist class status in China has created and reinforced boundaries, tension, and uneven power relations Taiwanese business people and their families and the Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan Strait is one of the few explosive spots in today's world that has the potential to trigger military confrontations between two major powers (the People's Republic of China and the United States). Since the leader of Taiwan is determined to seek Taiwan's formal independence, which cannot be accepted by the PRC, many scholars warn that a Taiwan Strait War will break out in the foreseeable future. Other observers argue that the PRC will not risk a war over Taiwan because it can hardly afford the economic cost of such a war. What are the possible consequences of a future Taiwan Strait War? This article examines the impact of war on the PRC through the history of three major Sino- wars that occurred after the establishment of the PRC. I also look back to the Tiananmen Square Incident to see the international reactions and its damage of a quasi civil war. Although history indicates that war does not necessarily impede the development of China in the long run, the consequences of a Taiwan Strait War will be more serious because of the uniqueness of the Taiwan issue as well as the highly interdependence between the PRC, Taiwan, and the rest of the world. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]