Ms. Christine Loh is a former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, and the Founder of Civic Exchange, a non-governmental organization. She was a popular politician but decided not to run again for re-election to the legislature of Hong Kong last year. She now heads Civic Exchange in Hong Kong. She is one of the most insightful commentators on Hong Kong affairs.

Christine will speak on "Hong Kong: Its Contribution to 'One Country'."

A brief biographical sketch of Christine's is enclosed:

"Thinking gets better when we think often. Thinking is fun because it creates new possibilities in the way we live our lives, Research helps to drive thinking. Thinking in groups helps leverage our collective intelligence and can lead to breakthroughs. I want the Civic Exchange to produce pragmatic solutions to public policy problems. I also want to be able to synthesize and publicize other people's good ideas."

Education

• University of Hull, England
• Bachelor of Law City University of Hong Kong
• Masters of Law in Chinese & Comparative Law

Awards

• Outstanding Young Persons Award 1988 Stars of Asia, Business Week 1998
• Stars of Asia, Business Week 2000

Affiliations

• Chairperson, Friends of the Earth (HK) - 1988-1990- and 1990-1992.
• Board of Directors, Rocky Mountain Institute, Colorado, USA, 1998-2001
• Council Member - Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 1999-2002

Experience

Christine Loh is well known for her wide-ranging intellect and ability to find practical solutions to problems. Her background in law, business, politics, media and the non-profit sector has given her considerable knowledge and insight about how they work and has helped her to become a leading voice in public policy in Hong Kong.

Loh has authored numerous papers, articles and public policy recommendations in a large number of local and international publications. The Economist described her in April 2000 as "perhaps LegCo's most gifted member". Business Week named her in 1998 and again in 2000 as one of Asia's Stars. Trained as a lawyer, Loh did not practise law but enjoyed a highly successful 12-year career with a multinational as a commodities trader from 1980-1991, rising to the position of managing director, before spending another 2 years as a director of business development with a Hong Kong company, responsible for putting together the LoFt retail stores, and an international consortium to bid for Container Terminal No. 9.

Appointed to the Legislative Council (LegCo) in 1992, running in two elections subsequently, Loh had a popular career as a politician until 2000 when she chose not to seek re-election. Her legislative successes were many, the most high profile being amending the law to enable the indigenous women of the New Territories to inherit rural land, restructuring the controversial section 30 of the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance, and sponsoring the historic Protection of the Harbor Ordinance.

From 1991, Loh has anchored public affairs radio programs at various times. She has also presented a variety of TV programs apart from being the subject of many more. She is a much sought after public speaker. With Lisa Hopkinson she founded Civic Exchange in September 2000. Loh is responsible for charting the Civic Exchange's long-term course.

Messrs. Baba and Gemba have studied how industrial products need many parts and materials. For example, an automobile consists of three million parts. Supporting Industries (SI) supply various components and materials for the manufacturing of industrial products.Previous studies suggested that SI was important for industrial linkage, trade balance and research and development. However, no one showed quantitative analysis for SI very well. Messrs. Baba and Gemba measured the level of SI by using an output-input table. As a result, they found that Korean SI has become less dependent on Japanese SI while ASEAN's SI still depends on Japanese SI. Messrs. Baba and Gemba will discuss their research findings and their conclusion that local automobile parts suppliers in Indonesia need to improve client approval functions urgently in order to survive in the industry.

The Kingdom of Bhutan, an independent country in the Himalayas, has designed its own theory and practice of socioeconomic development, which it calls "Gross National Happiness." Bhutan entered into relations with the outside world only in the early 1960s; since then it has pursued development in a way that is consonant with its own Buddhist values. An intrinsically interesting experiment in itself, Bhutan's experience now assumes broader relevancy as its pursuit of development must take account of the problems small nations and cultures confront in the face of the powerful impact of globalization. The Ambassador will discuss these problems and answer questions. His Excellency Om Pradhan, the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of Bhutan to the United Nations, was born in 1946 and was educated in India, England, and Hawaii. As Minister for Trade, Industry, Power, and Tourism in the Royal Government of Bhutan, he has been a central figure in Bhutan's economic and social development. He has also served as Bhutan's Ambassador to India, Nepal, and the Maldives, has led the Bhutanese delegation in several rounds of boundary talks with the People's Republic of China, has been a member of the National Assembly of Bhutan, and has participated in innumerable international and regional conferences.

Jin Hwa Jung is a Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET) in Seoul, Korea, and currently a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG), Stanford University. She earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees at Seoul National University, and Ph.D. degree in economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Jung has undertaken substantial work on the analysis of the Korean labor market. Her current research focuses on the gender differences in employment and wage structures in the industries with differing knowledge intensity. Abstract: Knowledge-based industries have taken an increasingly large role in the Korean economy since the mid-1980s in terms of value-added, employment, and productivity growth. Compared with traditional industries, knowledge-based industries are characterized by higher ratio of knowledge-intensive jobs, higher wage rates, and higher wage growth in the recent past. In particular, the gender wage gap is less noticeable in knowledge-based industries and, more importantly, less attributable to non-productivity-related discrimination against women. Policies to promote women's employment and career development in knowledge-based sectors are called for.

The complex issues arising from child labor have been addressed in several of the most significant ways--yielding the most important lessons--in the Asia Pacific region. It is in the Asia Pacific region too, that the greatest number of child laborers live. This conference will address the complexities of child labor and review the range of key "solutions" to improve the condition of children--especially impoverished, working children--in the region. Some people claim that abusive child labor is an inevitable byproduct of agrarian and developing economies. But is this accurate? What measures will alleviate abuses and hasten the elimination of exploitation? The United States is now the largest contributor to the ILO's International Programme on the Eradication of Child Labor. At the same time, the United States and US-based business have been accused of contributing to increases in child labor, through trade practices that allegedly expand inequality, or through the strong U.S. role in promoting neo-liberal economic policies through the activities of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF. What role can the United States play in alleviating the problem--and what role is it playing now? Are the critiques accurate? The term "child labor" conjures up images of poor young people, working in unsafe conditions, receiving inadequate wages, their health imperiled for life and their opportunity for education denied. What policies are appropriate to bring the worst practices to a swift though humane end? Much of the debate has been highly polemical, but more recently, the tone of the discussion has begun to change. It has begun to focus on the concrete measures that can be undertaken to improve the conditions under which children work, and to eliminate the abuses and exploitation to which millions of children are subjected. Participants in this roundtable will share the latest empirical findings on child labor in Asia and identify policies that are at the cutting edge in dealing with this issue.

Hailed by the New York Times as one of China's most influential intellectuals, Liu Junning is the founder and editor of the Journal Res Publica. Formerly a Fellow at the Institute of Political Science at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Liu is responsible for the Chinese translation of numerous works on democracy and classic liberal thought. In 1999 his collected essays were published as Republic, Democracy, Constitutionalism. He holds a doctorate in political theory from Beijing University.

In the space of ten short years, Germany and Japan have gone from paragons of economic success to models of political paralysis. In both countries, reformers call for a decisive move toward the liberal market model, yet find themselves frustrated with their governments' inability to act. This deadlock reflects the normal operation of German and Japanese democracy, and not its failure, for Germany and Japan are fundamentally divided over the merits of the proposed liberal reforms. As a result, Germany and Japan proceed with reforms slowly and cautiously, they package delicate compromises, and they design reforms to preserve the core institutions of their respective economic models as much as possible. Steven K. Vogel is Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. He specializes in the political economy of the advanced industrialized nations, especially Japan. His book, Freer Markets, More Rules: Regulatory Reform in Advanced Industrial Countries (Cornell University Press, 1996), won the 1998 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. He has written extensively on Japanese politics, industrial policy, trade and defense policy. He has taught previously at the University of California, Irvine and Harvard University. He has a B.A. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from UC Berkeley.

Before becoming the Governor of the Bank of Korea in 1995, Mr. Lee was Advisor for the Korea-Foreign Trade Association (1994) and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economic Planning Board (1993). He was also President of the Korea Gas Corporation (1991) and of Daewoo Motors Co. Ltd. (1988). In 1981, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota after having been the President of the Small and Medium Industry Promotion Corporation.

Southeast Asia has been buffeted by several shocks and momentous events over the last two years, in particular the economic recession which started in July 1997; the return of Hong Kong to China; and political instability, particularly in Indonesia.

Increasingly, large, extended urban regions compete with each other in the Region and in the global economy. Furthermore, as a result of strong driving forces, including free trade, convergence in tax structures, and the "death of distance", Southeast Asian urban regions are less protected and influenced by nation states, and are thus highly vulnerable to unpredictable consequences of strong forces associated with globalization and co-evolving domestic change.

Dr. Webster will assess events of the last few years in terms of the dramatic re-positioning that has occurred among major urban regions in Southeast Asia - identifying winners and losers. His assessment will be based on consideration of both competitiveness and resilience - the two primary objectives, perhaps non-reconcilable, of most Southeast Asian urban regions.

Dr. Webster is currently a visiting scholar at the Asia/Pacific Research Center. He has been Senior Urban Advisor to the National Planning Board, Prime Minister's Office, Thailand for the last five years. He is involved in formulation of strategies and policies related to urbanization in the context of rapid socio-economic change in Thailand. He is also full time advisor to the World Bank's Asia and Pacific Urban Unit. At the global level, he is involved in formulation of the World Bank's Global Urban Strategy, and the World Development Report 2000 which will focus on urbanization and decentralization.

Dr. Webster was formerly Director of the Urban Planning Program at the University of Calgary and Professor of Planning at the Asian Institute of Technology. He has advised a wide variety of governments, cities, corporations, and development agencies on urban policies and programming, particularly in Southeast Asia, over the last 25 years. He is the author of many academic and professional publications on urbanization and urban issues in Southeast Asia.

Dr. Nakai will talk about his research plan for the next year in China. A broad and open-ended question he has in mind is, "What is happening in the Chinese countryside these days?" He is interested in analyzing the roles of the county leaders in the pursuit of economic development. Despite its historical role as the most coherent subprovincial administrative unit, the county in China has not received much academic attention until recently. First, Dr. Nakai would like to add a case or two to the pioneering works by Jean Oi and Andrew Walder, and Marc Blecher and Vivienne Shue. Second, he would like to look into the county leaders' response to market economy. How do they respond to foreign trade, special economic zones, and private enterprises? Third, he hopes to bring some comparative perspectives to the study of the county. Would county leaders in Heilongjiang province, for example, behave like their colleagues in Guangdong or in Zhejiang? Are those county leaders different from local administrators in Japan? Dr. Nakai will discuss the implications of the preliminary analysis of a few counties in Heilongjiang province. Yoshi Nakai has been Senior Researcher at the Institute of Developing Economies since 1997. He graduated from Tohoku University (BL) and from Indiana University (MA). He studied Chinese language at Beijing University in 1981. He just completed his Ph.D. in comparative politics at the University of Michigan. His dissertation is about politics in Manchuria and is chaired by Mike Oksenberg. Dr. Nakai was lecturer at University of Michigan; researcher at the Japanese Consulate in Hong Kong from 1991 to1994; and senior researcher at the Japan Institute of International Affairs from 1994 to 1997. He is going to Beijing next year.