What is the importance of China in the novel, The Wangs Vs The World?

At the end of the novel, Charles Wang returns to the China he has dreamed about for his entire life. Unlike the Taiwan of his youth, this China is modernized, a gleaming electrical place that seems to have surpassed even American greatness. His experience of China is not at all what he expects, and though he has disavowed his Taiwanese upbringing for most of his adult life--claiming a specifically Chinese identity instead--the things he years for most in this new China are the experiences and foods of Taiwan.