Fidel Ramos' term as President of the Philippines was marked, among other things, by the highest economic growth since the Republic's independence, massive investments in infrastructure, and a peace agreement with the Southern Muslim secessionist movement. In 1998 he was awarded the UNESCO Peace Award for his role in promoting stability in the Southeast Asian region. Following his term of office, Mr. Ramos has continued to exercise a significant influence on Filipino politics. In January 2000 he led a pivotal march demanding the resignation of his successor, Joseph Estrada, which occurred two days later. A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, he now serves as Special Roving Ambassador for the current president, Gloria Arroyo.

Lunch will be served at this special event. Please RSVP to Neeley Main by 10am on July 5, 2001 to secure your place. In addition to his post at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Professor Liu is Research Director of Hong Kong Centre for Economic Research, the Director of the Hong Kong and Asia-Pacific Economics Reseach Programme, and the Secretary-General of the East Asian Economic Association.

His Excellency Sung Chul Yang, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the United States, is a well-known political scientist and author with a long and distinguished career in academia and politics. From 1996 to the time of his posting in Washington, Ambassador Yang served as a member of the Korean National Assembly. He also served as president of the Unification and Policy Forum, and chairman of the International Cooperation Committee for the National Congress for New Politics during this period. He worked as vice chair of the Unification and Foreign Affairs Committee, and was a member of the Political Reform Committee. Most recently, Ambassador Yang served as an executive member of the New Millennium Democratic Party's 21st Century National Affairs Advisory Committee. Outside of the National Assembly, Ambassador Yang has been involved in government and politics for many years. He served as the secretary-general of the Association of Korean Political Scientists in North America and as president of the Korean Association of International Studies. He has also been a member of the Advisory Committees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of National Defense, and the National Unification Board. In addition to his involvement in government, Ambassador Yang has had a successful career in academia. He was a professor at Eastern Kentucky University from 1970-75 and at the University of Kentucky from 1975-86. He has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University, Pembroke State University, Indiana University, and Seoul National University. From 1987-94 Ambassador Yang held the position of dean of Academic Affairs at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. Ambassador Yang is the author of several books on Korean issues, including The North and South Korean Political Systems: A Comparative Analysis (Westview, 1994). He is also a much sought after contributor to many political science journals. He has been interviewed often by leading newspapers, magazines and radio stations from around the world. Ambassador Yang received his doctorate in Political Science from the University of Kentucky (1970), earlier receiving an MA from the University of Hawaii (1967), and a BA from Seoul National University (1964). From 1960-62 he served in the Korean Army.

Susan V. Lawrence is Beijing Bureau Chief for the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Hong Kong-based weekly newsmagazine wholly owned by Dow Jones & Co. Before joining the Review in 1998, Ms. Lawrence was an Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies at Harvard University. From 1990 to 1996, Ms. Lawrence was Beijing Bureau Chief for the Washington, D.C.-based newsweekly US News & World Report. From 1989 to 1990, she worked on the foreign desk of US News in Washington, D.C. Ms. Lawrence holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies and an M.A. in Regional Studies-East Asia, both from Harvard University. She was a Harvard-Yenching Institute Scholar at Peking University from 1985 to 1987.

The Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) is Pakistan's best reputed and only private management school. Operating within the environment of a government run university system, LUMS has used innovative strategies in marketing, research and consulting to reach its globally renowned status. Wasim Azhar, Dean of LUMS, will present a case study on its strategies. Dr. Wasim Azhar has taught at Wake Forest University, Swarthmore College, Kean University and the University of Pennsylvania in the USA. He has also worked as Marketing Analyst for Exxon Corporation in the USA. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), American Marketing Association, American Production Inventory Control Society (APICS), American Mathematical Association and MENSA. His research interests include issues in business policy, marketing strategy, and negotiation dynamics. Dr. Azhar received his Ph.D. and MSc from the University of Pennsylvania, MBA from Wake Forest University, and MSc from University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore.

In 1975Ð76 the fall of Saigon was followed by national reunification and the establishment of the Socialist Republic. Access to the Mekong Delta was widely expected to facilitate rapid neo-Stalinist industrialization and the appearance of a powerful military threat to capitalist SEA. But this did not happen. By 1981 partial reforms had permitted all state enterprises to operate in markets and some degree of agricultural decollectivisation. In the second half of the 1980s there was a clear de-Stalinization of everyday life. And by 1989Ð90 a recognizable market economy had emerged. Since then the Vietnamese Communist Party has, with some success, negotiated a major opening-up of the country to foreign contacts. Vietnam has joined ASEAN, and has seen the emergence of land, labor, and capital markets, and the confused processes by which classes form. Fundamental economic and political change has therefore occurred. Growth has been rather fast and the use of state violence minimal. Politically, for the still-Leninist VCP, the shift from Plan to Market has been a great success. What is the political economy basis for this? Despite emergent capitalist classes and a market economy, the political economy of "post-transition" Vietnam is heavily marked by its recent history, and remains very different from other ASEAN members. Notwithstanding revolutionary change, dualities common to both the traditional and modern political economies have offered great potential for political restructuring. In this sense "development doctrines" are perhaps less exotic and more indigenous than elsewhere in SEA. This facilitates relatively harmonious political adaptation and is the key to understanding change. For example, wide rural land access, with a collective tinge in the most densely populated areas, has a strong and pervasive effect upon the macro political economy. "Voice and exit" are enhanced. Thus we see rather high levels of migration, and risk bearing be farmers. Rural GDP has grown fast through the 1990s. Also, real wages in urban areas tend to be higher and the labor regime less brittle. What are the political implications of such a land regime? At the end of the day, one reason for the lack of extensive state violence against the population seems to be that the party/state has sufficient sources of support and power for tense economic issues in the rural areas to be fought out without property rights needing violence to enforce them. These issues are fought out locally (within cooperatives and communes) and in macro contexts (access to world markets). But in the rural areas the state does not, apparently, need to support particular economic interests for its survival. One reason for this is that the "land issue" has been addressed through the adaptation of socialist models, so that large-scale land property is not (yet?) a major issue. Dominant groups in the rural areas do not depend upon land access for their incomes. Adam Fforde is a development economist. He holds an Oxford MA (Engineering Science and Economics), a London MSc (Economics) and a Cambridge PhD (Economics). He studied Vietnamese in Hanoi during 1978/79 and was a visiting scholar at the National Economics University (Hanoi) in 1985Ð86. He lived in Vietnam from 1987 to 1992 while working as an advisor to the Swedish aid program, and in Australia from 1992 to 1999, where he was a visiting fellow at the ANU and Chairman of Aduki Pty Ltd (Consultants). He is now senior fellow at the SEA Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He has published on topics including the economic development of north Vietnam prior to 1975, agricultural cooperatives, and the transition from plan to market. He is currently working on class formation and the emergence of factor markets in the 1990s, industrial reform since the early 1960s, and Vietnamese development doctrine.

The bundling of race and ethnicity with nation is common in state ideology and popular perceptions in East Asia. These beliefs in racial homogeneity deeply held by the societies that make up this world region are now being challenged by the international migration of workers, most of whom are themselves from Asia or ethnic Asian origins. The advent of multicultural societies has already begun and, given both the globalization of migration and demographic trends in the higher income economies, it will increasingly become an issue for public policy in the coming decades. While central governments tend to continue to reify the race-nation ideology, local governments and citizen groups have in many instances become more positive in their responses to the issues of cultural diversity and social justice for foreign workers working and living in their communities. Mike Douglass is professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Hawaii. He has lived in East and Southeast Asia for more than twelve years, where he has carried out research and practice in urban policy and planning. His current research interests and projects include globalization and urban policy in the Asia Pacific region; urban poverty, environment, and social capital; foreign workers and households in Japan; and rural-urban linkages in national development. His recent books are Culture and the City in East Asia, edited with Won Bae Kim (Oxford, 1997); Cities for Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil Society in a Global Age, edited with John Friedmann (John Wiley, 1998); and Coming to Japan: Foreign Workers and Households in an Age of Global Migration, edited with Glenda Roberts (Routledge, 2000).