Since gaining its independence in 1965, the Republic of Singapore has attracted a level of scholarly and journalistic interest disproportionate to its tiny size. Singapore has defied categorization. Time and again it has seemed to swim against the tide of intellectual and ideological fashion. It practiced a market economy and free trade before these became the rage. It maintained one-party dominance long after pluralistic democracy became the global norm that it is today. Singapore's "uniquely anomalous status as the world's richest nondemocracy" (Larry Diamond) makes it a puzzling exception to the rule that economically advanced countries practice political pluralism. Most recently, financial and political turbulence elsewhere in East Asia have highlighted the extraordinary stability of the Singapore system. Has the ruling People's Action Party found the answer to successful governance in a global economy? Are the city-state's leaders forcibly postponing the inevitableÑperhaps even imminentÑonset of political liberalization? Or is there another way of resolving the "Singapore puzzle"? Chee Soon Juan joined the opposition Singapore Democratic Party in 1992. Three months later he was dismissed from his position as a lecturer at the National University of Singapore. His writings include To Be Free: Stories from Asia's Struggle against Oppression (1998) and Dare to Change: An Alternative Vision for Singapore (1994). Cherian George is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at Stanford University. From 1990 to 1999 he worked as a journalist for Singapore's leading English-language newspaper, The Straits Times. He is a founding member of The Roundtable, a nonpartisan discussion group in Singapore.

Part of the California-Asia Connection Seminar series. California, and the Bay Area in particular, is exercising a defining influence on the global economy. This is based on the state's dominance in key technology sectors, and the capacity for innovation. Dr. Randolph will present research benchmarking the Bay Area economy against comparable regions nationwide, across 35 indicators of performance, and argue that California's global leadership in this domain is sustainable only so long as the host environment nurtures innovation and entrepreneurship. California's trade "policy" is most appropriately understood, therefore, as the rules and regulations governing the state's labor and human capital issues, and the provision of critical infrastructure. R. Sean Randolph was appointed president of the Bay Area Economic Forum on June 1, 1998. The Bay Area Economic Forum, a nonprofit, public-private partnership of business, government, academic, labor, and community leaders works to foster a dynamic and competitive economic environment and to enhance the overall quality of life in the nine-county San Francisco Bay region. Dr. Randolph most recently served as director of international trade for the State of California. As senior manager of the California Trade and Commerce Agency's Office of Export Development, he directed international business development programs that stimulate exports and introduce California companies to key overseas markets. Before joining the State of California, Dr. Randolph served as Managing Director of the RSR Pacific Group, an international business consulting firm specializing in Asia and Latin America. From 1988Ð92 he was International Director General of the Pacific Basin Economic Council, a fifteen-nation international business organization composed of leading U.S., Asian, and Latin American corporations. His professional career also includes extensive experience in the U.S. Government on the U.S. Congress staff (1976Ð80), and the White House staff (1980Ð81). He subsequently served in the U.S. State Department on the Policy Planning Staff as Special Adviser for Policy in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs and as Deputy/Ambassador-at-Large for Pacific Basin affairs (1981Ð85). From 1985Ð88 he served in the U.S. Department of Energy as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs. A graduate (Magna Cum Laude) of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, Dr. Randolph holds a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and studied at the London School of Economics. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar Association, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the U.S. National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the U.C. Berkeley Center for APEC, the Southwest Center of Environmental Research and Policy, and the Headlands Institute. Dr. Randolph writes and speaks frequently on economic development and international business and economic issues.

As generally described, Japan's development of the internet industry has fallen behind even other Asian economies. Even though Japan's first trial of policy reformation in the mid 1980s was relatively early, what made this critical delay? Shin Yasunobe will present and evaluate Japan's policy track record in the 1990s. He will also present unique aspects of Internet development recently observed in Japan, and their implications for the future. Shin Yasunobe, formerly a high-ranking official with the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) has been appointed executive director at Stanford Japan CenterÑResearch, located in Kyoto. Yasunobe is a twenty-two year veteran of MITI who left his post as director of its Electronic Policy Division in the Machinery and Information Industries Bureau to take the reins of a new project at Stanford Japan CenterÑResearch. This project will be a set of comparative studies on the international dimensions of the Internet and e-commerce, with particular focus on the Asian economies.

When the Asian Crisis hit in 1997, California looked particularly vulnerable. Foreign markets had been of growing importance to the state's economy over the previous decade, and California's trade was heavily weighted toward Asia. The US trade deficit had been rising steadily and the rapid depreciation of Asian currencies threatened to dampen demand for the state's goods, while at the same time flooding it with imports. Yet the State's economy weathered this storm quite well. Why? Kroll and Bardhan will present research on California's linkages with the global economy which help explain this outcome. Additionally, Kroll and Bardhan will present research showing how California is becoming integrated with the global economy in other, more complex ways. California-based firms have expanded their sales and production activities throughout the world, and production that occurs within the state has come be increasingly linked to Asia for imports of intermediate inputs. Cheaper inputs and finished goods in turn have moved the economy to higher value-added sectors and related services. Kroll and Bardhan will discuss the some consequences of these linkages and analyze their effects on the employment structure of the state. Dr. Cynthia Kroll is Regional Economist at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, at the University of California at Berkeley. She holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Berkeley's Department of City and Regional Planning, and serves as an advisor to the California Office of Economic Research and the Association of Bay Area Governments Ashok Bardhan is a research associate at the Fisher Center, and served formerly as an officer with the Reserve Bank of India.

Bill Gates recently said "if the 1980s were about quality and the 1990s were about reengineering, then the 2000s will be about velocity. When the increase in velocity of business is great enough, the very nature of business changes." These three factors--quality, reengineering, and velocity-are rapidly changing the structure of foreign trade. They directly affect relationships such as the flow of imports, exports and foreign direct investment. Such complex networks of global and local interactions generate new ways of doing business by selectively collapsing time and space relationships. This rapidly evolving complex system is making it very difficult for policymakers to analyze public policy trade related issues or to evaluate the possible impact of their decisions. New ways to visualize, develop, implement and evaluate California State foreign trade policy are needed. Dr. Koehler's presentation will lay out some of the elements that might be included in such an approach to state trade policy making, and identify various options for California State government. Dr. Gus Koehler is Senior Policy Analyst with the California Research Bureau, where he conducts policy research for the State Legislature and the Governor's office. His current research responsibilities include identifying and evaluating state economic development issues and strategies for addressing them. The author of California Trade Policy (1999), Dr. Koehler serves as adjunct faculty of Public Administration at the University of Southern California.

Japan's macroeconomic problem has yet to be properly diagnosed. Throughout the 1990s, policy makers could not decide on the proper macro economic measures to combat the country's severe economic slump. We propose a unified explanation, with deep historical roots, of why aggregate private demand failed to recover after Japan's stock and real estate bubbles burst in 1991 and deflationary pressure continues into the new millenium. Ron McKinnon is William D. Eberle Professor of International Economics at the Department of Economics, Stanford University. His research interests cover trade and financial policy in less-developed countries, the transition from socialism in Asia and Eastern Europe, the foreign exchange market and U.S.-Japan trade disputes, European monetary unification and international monetary reform, and the economics of market-preserving federalism. Rishi Goyal is a Ph.D graduate student in international economics working with Professor McKinnon on a Japan project--and will be writing his dissertation in this area. His undergraduate B.A. (with distinction) is from Swarthmore College in 1995. He expects to complete his Ph.D in 2001.

12.00 p.m. Mr. Noriaki OZAWA (Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Japan) What is Japan? A Look at Japan's Changing Sociocultural Identity. 12.20 p.m. Mr. Nobutake SHIRAI (Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, Japan) Internet Business in U.S. and Japan: A Comparative Study. 12.40 p.m. Mr. Raita SUGIMOTO (Toyota Motor Corporation, Japan) Reorganization of the Automobile Industry and its Impact on the Asian Market. 1.00 p.m. Mr. Takeo TAKIUCHI (The Patent Office, Japan) Entrepreneurship through Technology Transfer in Silicon Valley. 1.20 p.m. Mr. Kenji UCHIDA (The Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc., Japan) Setting Up New Ventures In-house at Kansai Electric Power Company. 1.40 p.m. Mr. Zhi-Jie ZENG (CITIC Pacific, Hong Kong) China's WTO bid and the Effect on China's Internet Business. Research Introductions: Mr. Yong-Ky EUM (Hyundai Heavy Industry, Korea) Mr. Jiang FENG (People's Bank of China, PRC) Ms. Xiaohui ZHANG (People's Bank of China, PRC)

The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum completed its first ten years in 1999. It is appropriate to pause and look back at its evolution over this period, and look forward to assess its future role in the multilateral world of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This paper attempts both of these tasks from a New Zealand perspective. The factors and forces behind regionalism, its points of confluence and conflict with multilateralism, and its future role in a globalised international economy are all addressed in this paper. How the forces of regionalism are shaping up in the Asia-Pacific region, and how New Zealand - a small open economy - is linking itself into it are anlysed to put New Zealand's recent economic reforms in an international perspective. To what extent New Zealand and other countries in the Asia-Pacific area can learn and benefit from the experiences of one another is brought into sharper focus in the paper. Professor Srikanta Chatterjee is a professor of international economics at Massey University in New Zealand. A native of India, Professor Chatterjee studied economics at the Universities of Calcutta, India, and Surrey and London, England, receiving his Ph D from the London School of Economics. Besides New Zealand, Professor Chatterjee has been on the full time faculty in universities in India, U.K., Australia, Japan and Fiji. He has also been on the visiting faculty in Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Italy, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mauritius, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Swaziland and Vietnam. In 1997, Professor Chatterjee was a Japan Foundation Fellow at the Tokyo Keizai University, and, in 1998, he spent a semester at the Kyoto Ritsumeikan University as a New Zealand Asia 2000 Foundation Visiting Professor of Asia-Pacific Studies. Currently a Fulbright Travelling Fellow, Professor Chatterjee is visiting Berkeley, and attending a conference in San Diego before going on give lectures at the University of Colima in Mexico. Professor Chatterjee's teaching and research interests include international economics, international business, the Asia-Pacific economies, inequality and income distribution, and the economics of the household.

An eminent historian of China and Overseas Chinese, Wang Gungwu has served as President of the University of Hong Kong, Professor and Director of the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University, and Dean of Arts at the University of Malaya in Singapore. He is currently Director of the East Asian Institute at National University of Singapore and Distinguished Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. His many books include The Nanhai Trade: The Early History of Chinese Trade in the South China Sea (1958, new edition 1998); Community and Nation (1981, new edition 1993); China and Southeast Asia: Myths, Threats, and Culture (1999); The Chinese Overseas: From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy (2000).