John Wilson Lewis, William Haas Professor Emeritus of Chinese Politics at Stanford University, is one the founders of the field of contemporary China studies. After receiving a doctorate from UCLA, he taught at Cornell University before coming to Stanford in 1968. He founded and directed Stanford's Center for East Asian Studies, as well as the Center for International Security and Arms Control, and the Northeast Asia-United States Forum on International Policy (now Shorenstein APARC). He currently directs the Project on Peace and Cooperation in the Asian-Pacific Region. Professor Lewis has written widely about China, Asia, and security matters. Many of his works have long been required reading for students of Chinese politics, especially his still often cited Leadership in Communist China. His edited volumes include: The City in Communist China, Party Leadership and Revolutionary Power in China, Peasant Rebellion and Communist Revolution in Asia, and Next Steps in the Creation of an Accidental Nuclear War Prevention Center. His history of the Chinese nuclear weapons program, China Builds the Bomb, written with Xue Litai, is published both in English (by Stanford University Press), and, in Chinese, by the Atomic Energy Press in Beijing. He has also co-authored Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War and China's Strategic Seapower: The Politics of Force Modernization in the Nuclear Age. In addition to his work at Stanford, John Lewis has served on the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences, the Joint Committee on Contemporary China of the Social Science Research Council, and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He has been a consultant to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Department of Defense, and is currently a consultant to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress. He has made numerous visits to the People's Republic of China (PRC), Japan, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and the Soviet Union/Russian Federation.

Panelist biographies: A specialist on democracy in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Professor Diamond was in Taiwan as an official observer of the March election. He is co-editor of Journal of Democracy. A former associate editor of the Journal of Asian Studies, Dr. Myers has taught economics at National Taiwan University in Taipei. He was an observer of the March election. Formerly the Consul-General of Taiwan in South Africa, Dr. Feng is currently the Executive Secretary for the Research and Planning Board of the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dr. Zhao is author of Across the Taiwan Strait: Mainland China, Taiwan, and the 95-96 Crisis, and Associate Professor of Politics at Colby College. He was an official election observer for the Mainland Affairs Commission of Taiwan.

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).

Mike Pillsbury earned a BA at Stanford and a PhD in political science at Columbia University. He is a longtime analyst in Chinese foreign policy and national security strategy at RAND Corporation, the Defense Department, and as a staff member on Capital Hill. He has authored several influential books and articles, including, most recently, Chinese Views of Future Warfare and China Debates in the Future Security Environment.

Professor Jean-Luc Domenach is one of France's leading experts on China, and on Asia more broadly. His publications include works that have dealt successively with the internal and external politics of the People's Republic of China and with international relations in East Asia. His books include The Origins of the Great Leap Forward (1995); The Forgotten Gulag: China's Prison Camps (1992); Asian Communism: Dead or in Transition (1994); Asia Rediscovered (1997) and, most recently, Asia in Danger (1998). In addition to his academic writings, he is a regular columnist for two French dailies, La Croix and Ouest-France. He is also on the editorial and advisory boards of several scholarly journals, including the French Review of Political Science, International Politics, and Politics Abroad. Professor at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, beginning in 1995 he became Scientific Director of the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, where he is also in charge of the Masters of Contemporary Asia Program. Jean-Luc Domenach is a knight of the National Order of Merit.

Why do some regions seem more innovative then other regions? What is the secret of successful regions? Based on research in several innovative regions, Collaborative Economics has identified some of the factors that shape success. Doug Henton, President of Collaborative Economics based in Palo Alto will present results from the 2000 Index of Silicon Valley and the results of a recent study on Innovative Regions which analyzes trends in several American regions including Austin, Route 128, Northern Virginia, San Diego as well as Silicon Valley. Doug founded Collaborative Economics in July 1993 after a decade as assistant director of SRI International's Center for Economic Competitiveness. At SRI, Doug directed local strategy projects in diverse regions, including Tampa, Florida; Southern California; and Austin, Texas. He led major state-level strategy development projects in Arizona, Florida, and California, and provided consulting assistance to the President's Commission on Industrial Competitiveness, the Western Governors Association, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the Appalachian Regional Commission. Internationally, Doug directed major projects on the economic future of Hong Kong, the technopolis strategy in Japan, and regional development in China. Doug holds a bachelor's degree in political science and economics from Yale University and a master of public policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Tatsuo Yamada is one of Japan's foremost experts on China's modern political history and Sino-Japanese Relations. He has written numerous articles and edited important volumes on the Republican Period, including works on the internal politics and ideology of the Nationalist Party and the relationship between the Nationalists and the Communists. He is editor of the book 150 Years of Sino-Japanese Relations, has written on Japanese studies on modern Chinese history, and on current political developments in the PRC. Professor of Political Science at Keio University since 1977, he has served as Director of the Center for Area Studies and as Dean of the Faculty of Law at Keio.

Between four and five thousand years ago, elephants were found in China as far north as the location of present-day Beijing. Today, wild elephants are confined to a few protected enclaves along the southwest border. To some degree, this retreat was due to a long-term decrease in the mean annual temperature, but the most important cause was the destruction of habitat by Chinese-style agricultural development. Mark Elvin uses the pattern of retreat of the elephants as a means of defining to a first degree of approximation the complementary pattern of the spread of forest clearance for farming in China across space and time, and to discuss the economic and other causes for the historical deforestation. Mark Elvin is Research Professor of Chinese History at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU, and Emeritus Fellow of St. Anthony's College, Oxford. He is author of The Pattern of the Chinese Past (1973), Another History: Essays on China from a European Perspective (1996), and Changing Stories in the Chinese World (1997, among other works. Elvin was educated at Cambridge University and Harvard.