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.

Since the 1960s, television has been a fixture of the Japanese household, and NHK's TV news has until very recently been the dominant, and most trusted, source of political information for the Japanese citizen. NHK's news style is distinctive among the broadcasting systems of industrialized countries; it emphasizes facts over interpretation and gives unusual priority to coverage of the national bureaucracy. In his talk, Krauss will argue that this approach is not simply a reflection of Japanese culture, but a result of the organization and processes of NHK and their relationship with the state. These factors had profound consequences for the state's postwar re-legitimization, while the commercial networks' recent challenge to NHK has helped engender the wave of cynicism currently faced by the state. Professor Krauss is a leading expert on Japanese Politics, U.S.-Japan relations, and Japan's political economy. He also is the director of the International Career Associates Program (ICAP) at IR/PS. His most recent book, Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK and Television News (Cornell University Press, 2000), discusses Japan's mammoth public broadcaster, and its relationship to and consequences for politics. He recently received a prestigious Abe Fellowship to conduct research on Japanese foreign policy decision making in APEC and its impact on U.S.-Japan relations. Krauss is co-editor of Media and Politics in Japan and has co-edited and written contributing articles for Democracy in Japan and Conflict in Japan. He wrote a monograph for the Foreign Policy Association, entitled Japan's Democracy: How Much Change? and has authored many articles in professional journals of political science and Asian studies.

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.

S.B. Woo is a physicist and former Lieutenant Governor of Delaware. He was born in Shanghai, China, and came to the United States from Hong Kong at the age of eighteen. He received his B.S., summa cum laude, in mathematics and physics from Georgetown College in Kentucky and his Ph. D. in physics from Washington University in St. Louis in 1964. His other experiences include being trustee of the University of Delaware, an Institute Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. As OCA's (Organization of Chinese Americans) National President in 1991, his vision was to help make the Asian- American an equal partner in the making of the American Dream. After politics, Dr. Woo returned to University of Delaware to teach Physics. He enjoys greatly using the methodology of physics to do research in economics, education and national technology policy. He is currently working on a project called The 80-20 Initiative.