Is there a sociopolitical subtext?

Just watched this movie, and I'm in awe of the emotional ferocity and melancholy on-screen. I'm wondering, though, if the story is meant on some level as a parable about East Asian relations, and if knowledge of East Asian history post-World War II enriches the film at all.

In trivia, it's mentioned that 2046 A.D. will be the end of a 50-year period in which China allows Hong Kong to operate nearly autonomously. 2046 in the film is represented as the place in which everything stays the same, where all memory is kept - so there's an interesting connection there. There's also a Japanese boyfriend in the film, and Tony Leung's character takes several trips to (I think it was) Singapore. It's been mentioned that characters speak to each other in different dialects - a nuance an English-only speaker can't pick up on.