LONDON -- It is at airports that one can tell that most of East Asia is merging into one gigantic business and market entity, a crisscrossed latticework flow of people, goods, ideas, lifestyles, relationships -- of such size, speed and intensity that it is beyond the power of any governments to check or unravel it.
But wait, say the skeptics. Airports are not real life, they are not for ordinary people. They are for the moneyed classes, and anyway they are all the same.
That's the point. Sameness is winning over political standoffs, historic feuds, assertions of rivalry and cultural separatism. Stand in the biggest concourse in the newest airport in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo, Bangkok, Seoul and a few things become obvious.