The July 2005 report on Chinese military power represents a major milestone in the Department of Defense's (DoD) annual assessments of the People's Liberation Army's capabilities. For the first time since the Bush Administration assumed office, the Pentagon has asserted that China possesses capabilities that threaten the region as well as Taiwan. What is the basis for DoD's new assessment, and what are the implications for future U.S. strategy towards China?

About the presenter:

Jonathan D. Pollack served as Chair of the Strategic Research Department between 2000 and 2004. He holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan and was a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard University. Dr. Pollack was previously affiliated with the RAND Corporation, Brandeis University, UCLA, and the RAND Graduate School of Policy Studies. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

Dr. Pollack has published widely on China's political and strategic roles; the international politics of Northeast Asia; U.S. policy in Asia and the Pacific; and Chinese technological and military development. Dr. Pollack's latest publications include articles in Asia-Pacific Review, Issues and Studies, Korea National Defense University Review, Naval War College Review, Strategic Comments, Orbis, and Asian Survey; and chapters in various publications. He is the author of the forthcoming Power Shift: China and Asia's New Dynamics (forthcoming, 2005); If China Attacks Taiwan (forthcoming, 2005); and Redesigning East Asia's Strategic Map: Interests, Identity, and Power (forthcoming, 2005). He is completing a volume on Korea in the longer term, to be published in 2006.

China's software industry is at an inflexion point. For the past decade, China has been in the shadow of India's spectacular success in the IT outsourcing industry. While changes are underway, many challenges remain. However, it is possible to build software development teams in China, collaborating with teams in the United States, to be as good as software development teams anywhere in the world.

Dr. Liu will discuss his experience as Chairman and CEO of Augmentum, a value-added software development services company that has grown in two years to more than 450 people worldwide, 90% of them at Augmentum's development facility in Shanghai. Sixty percent of Augmentum's work is high-value added such as total products and solutions, from architecture to system integration test. All their customers are in North America -- many of them leaders in their respective industries.

Leonard Liu has spent 30 years in the systems industry, with a track record of developing innovative computing technologies into successful businesses. Most recently, he served as president of ASE Group, a leading provider of IC test and packaging services, having held roles as Chairman and CEO of Walker Interactive Systems, COO of Cadence Design Systems, and President of Acer Group. He was an early champion of outsourcing to India and China at Cadence and Walker. Dr. Liu began his career at IBM where he was responsible for the creation and implementation of SQL and the management of CICS, SNA and AIX, eventually overseeing the worldwide Database and Language lines-of-business. He received his undergraduate degree from Taiwan University and his Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Part of SPRIE's Greater China and the Globalization of R&D seminar series

The pace of policy reform is important in new democracies, where the status quo policies, established by non-democratic regimes, may be far from the preferences of popular majorities. Slowing policy reform slows down governmental implementation of democratic policy mandates. This, in turn, may offset (at least partly) the positive effects of broader participation and greater accountability.

Whether the net impact of procedural reform is to accelerate or to slow policy reform depends on the particular procedures involved, and the political context. In this paper, the authors consider a procedure that, on the surface, appears likely to accelerate reform, thereby promoting change in the policy status quo. This is a sunset rule.

This paper focuses on the sunset rule adopted in South Korea, at the end of the Kim Young Sam administration. Kim's support for the sunset rule at the end of his term is puzzling. Why would a lame duck president support a rule that would seem to limit the life of the regulations passed in his own term?

Jeeyang Rhee Baum, is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. She earned her Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include comparative political institutions, administrative law, and bureaucracies with a particular emphasis on East Asia. Her most recent publications include: "Presidents Have Problems Too: The Logic of Intra-branch Delegation in East Asian Democracies", British Journal of Political Science (forthcoming) and "Breaking Authoritarian Bonds: The Political Origins of the Taiwan Administrative Procedure Act", Journal of East Asian Studies.

Mr. Chiu Tai-san will speak about Taiwan's policy on cross-strait relations towards the Mainland with invited guests discussing its impact on US foreign policy.

Since the 1980s, simultaneous trends in Taiwan toward globalization and localization have contributed to people's construction of a past promoting local solidarity. Such rewriting of Taiwanese consciousness has relied heavily on a "rediscovery" of cultural traditions corresponding to Pingpu identity. (Pingpu identity is debated as an indigenous or a mestizo identity and used to claim that Taiwan is not Chinese.) Professor Pans examination of the development of Pingpu identity over the past ten years focuses on the 1996 event "We are All Pingpu" and uses both ethnographic and historical materials to analyze the role of Pingpu identity in rewriting Taiwanese conscious-ness.

Dr. Pan's research addresses the following questions: Who are the Pingpu? Why do some Taiwanese choose to be identified as Pingu while others do not? What is the significance of Pingpu identity for present-day Taiwanese consciousness? How has Pingpu identity been constructed? How and why do people rewrite the past when an identity is being created?

This is the final seminar in the Taiwan Seminar Series hosted by Shorenstein APARC.