The story of South Asia is that of missed opportunities. Mr. Burki will take a look at South Asia in comparison to East Asia. Mr. Shahid Javed Burki started his career as a member of the Civil Service of Pakistan. He held various positions including Director of West Pakistan Rural Works Program, Economic Advisor to the Governor and Chief Economist of West Pakistan, and Economic Consultant to the Ministry of Commerce. In 1974, Mr. Burki joined the World Bank as Senior Economist in the Policy Planning Division. He was promoted to Division Chief of the Policy Planning and Program Review Department and later became Senior Economic and Policy Advisor in the Office of the Vice President of External Relations. After becoming the Director of the International Relations Department of that vice-presidency, he was appointed Director for China and Mongolia, helping to design and implement the World Bank's lending program in China - at one point the largest Bank-financed program in the world. Mr. Burki was appointed Vice President of the Latin America and Caribbean Region and worked in this position until his retirement in August, 1999. Upon leaving the Bank, Mr. Burki was invited to head the EMP-Financial Advisors, LLC, a consulting firm located in Washington, D.C. Mr. Shahid Javed Burki was educated at Government College, Lahore; Christ Church, Oxford University (where he was a Rhodes Scholar) and Harvard University (Kennedy School and Economics Department). He holds graduate degrees in Physics and Economics.

Nike products, soccer balls, carpets, orange juice, garments, coffee beans--Consumer activists, labor unions and students have launched boycotts and protests against imports that have allegedly been produced by some of the world's 250 million child workers. But exporting countries complain that the vast majority of child workers do not work in export industries, and throwing children out of work in the export sector will not solve the problem. What will really help child laborers? Will globalization help or hurt? Sarah L. Bachman is a visiting scholar at the Asia/Pacific Research Center. She was an editorial writer and reporter for the San Jose Mercury News from 1991-1997. Her work has won or shared awards from the World Hunger Media Awards, the World Affairs Council of Silicon Valley, the Overseas Press Club of America, and InterAction, the consortium of U.S. agencies providing emergency relief. Bachman's series of articles on international child labor (on the web at www.merccenter.com/archives/childlabor) were among the nation's first to point out that well intentioned efforts to end child labor sometimes helped--but also, sometimes harmed thousands of child workers. Her multi-media project - including writing, photography, a school curriculum and two Web sites- explores the benefits and drawbacks of efforts to end child labor.

Throughout the 1990s, Japan muddled through restructuring its economic vitality and social flexibility to cope with an advent of a new era. Represented by the IT Revolution, the new era has changed existing legal frameworks, business practices, and socioeconomic traditions worldwide. Against this backdrop, Japan has embarked, though belatedly, on various reforms, including administrative reform. Can these efforts succeed? Can Japanese bureaucrats change Japan? Or who else will change Japan and what will be an agenda for the newly born Japan? Takeshi Isayama is a former Japanese government official with the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). While at MITI, he was responsible for drafting and implementing international trade policy including intellectual property policy serving as the Commissioner of the Japanese Patent Office and the Director-General of several bureaus including the International Trade Policy bureau during the Hashimoto and Obuchi administrations (1995-1999). He graduated from Tokyo University in 1967 with a Bachelor of Law degree and received his MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1971. After graduating from Tokyo University, he joined MITI in 1967.

Internet use in China has recently grown at a tremendous pace, and today there are more than 17 million users. In this talk, Harwit examines government control over the physical data pipelines and network content. He explores the management and revenue flows from the information highway, and political efforts to regulate the content that appears on Chinese computer screens. He also analyzes the post-WTO role foreign companies may have in the network's future development. He concludes that, though the telecommunications bureaucracy is keen to extract monetary profit from the Internet, political drive for control over content is muted by schizophrenic government policy, user self-censorship and, in the short run, user demographics. Eric Harwit is an Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii, and a visiting scholar at Stanford's Asia / Pacific Research Center for the 2000-2001 academic year. A 1984 graduate of Cornell University, he received a diploma from the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing in 1990, and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1992. Professor Harwit is the author of China's Automobile Industry (M.E. Sharpe, 1995), and several other articles on industrial and economic development in Asia. He is currently writing a book about the politics of telecommunication in China, and has a Fulbright research grant to conduct a study of telecommunications in rural China in mid-2001.

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.