Ambassador Qazi holds a masters' degree in economics from Punjab University in Lahore, Pakistan. He joined the foreign service of Pakistan in 1965 where he served as Official on Special Duty at Headquarters. Since then he has held various diplomatic assignments at Pakistan Missions, such as London (1967-1969), Tripoli (1969-1971), Cairo (1971-1975), Tokyo (1978-1981) and Copenhagen (1981-1982). Ambassador Qazi has also served as Ambassador of Pakistan to Syria, Germany, Russia, the Peoples' Republic of China and High Commissioner of Pakistan to India from March 1997 to May 2002. The Ambassador is married and has two daughters.

This seminar is part 2 of SPRIE's 5-part series on "Greater China: Entrepreneurial Leaders."

From a venture capital investor's perspective, what are the key opportunities and challenges of doing business in China in the current environment? Why? How is China's emerging private equity investment industry? What are the major differences between "home-grown" Chinese private equity firms and foreign capital firms? Bobby Chao will address these questions, based on personal experience gained over the past twenty years.

Bobby Chao began his career as one of the five original founders of Cadence Design Systems. A year after Cadence's successful IPO, Bobby founded Ocron, a leader in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology and document management software. Bobby was chairman and CEO of Ocron until Umax Technologies, Inc. acquired it. He then became part of the Umax team serving as senior vice president of marketing in charge of corporate marketing and investment. Bobby was previously general partner for Technology Associates Management Company and has served as chairman and CEO of VA Linux Systems.

Mr. Chao currently serves as chairman of Dragon Venture Inc., a cross-pacific venture capital, consulting, and M&A company, bridging the U.S. and Greater China markets. Portfolio companies focus on telecommunications, Internet infrastructure, Linux, fables IC designs, and EDA. Mr. Chao is currently on the board of several companies and professional organizations.

Mr. Chao holds a B.S. in physics from Taiwan, an M.S. in physics from Georgia State University, and an M.S. in aeronautical engineering from Stanford University.

The Korean peninsula has been at the center of Cold War politics ever since its 1945 territorial division, and remains so even after the demise of the Soviet empire. After half a century of intense conflict and tensions -- including a major war -- the leaders of North and South Korea held their first summit in summer 2000, creating hope and enthusiasm for peace and unification on the peninsula. However, the current stalemate in inter-Korean relations and the recent tension over North Korea's nuclear program clearly indicate that a peaceful conflict resolution, let alone unification, will not come easily. The current situation also attests to the urgent need for a new forum that can address various issues related to inter-Korean and North Korea-U.S./Japan relations at the nonofficial, nonpolitical level.

We believe that early 2003 will be a critical moment in inter-Korean and North Korea-U.S./Japan relations. The new South Korean government will take office in late February 2003 and the newly created special economic zone in Shin-ui-ju is expected to be at work in a few months. Also, the recent visit of Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi to North Korea could lead to a new relationship between the two countries, and the Bush administration will be entering the second half of its term in early 2003.

All these developments, along with the recent revelation of North Korea's nuclear program, make the proposed policy conference timely and essential for (re) formulating new North Korean policies by South Korea, Japan, and the United States. The proposed conference will discuss policy issues toward North Korea among scholars and policymakers from the United States, Japan, China, and Russia, as well as South Korea. We seek to produce a policy proposal to be presented to the new South Korean government, as well as to the governments in Tokyo and Washington, D.C.

Following the success of the first conference held in January 2002, the Asia/Pacific Research Center and the US Army War College plan to hold a second conference in January 2003. Its theme is "The Prospects for Peace in South Asia." The participants will address several topics: the role of religion in the politics of the region (primarily in Kashmir, but also in Indian and Pakistani politics), the political role of the Pakistani army, and the new challenges that nuclear weapons and the global war on terrorism have introduced. Possible lessons for the United States in trying to prevent war in South Asia as well as furthering its aims in the war on terrorism will be discussed. The conference speakers will provide an understanding of Kashmir, the role of religion in South Asian politics, local culture and attitudes, US military perspectives on South Asia and the situations and politics in India and Pakistan.

When Shorenstein APARC's 2002 South Asia conference was being planned at Shorenstein APARC, the events of September 11, 2001 had not taken place. To Americans, September 11 is mostly associated with the war against terrorism. However, the impact of 9-11 on longstanding political relations between India and Pakistan is less understood. Without such an understanding, it is difficult to explain why India and Pakistan have twice almost gone to war in the past months due to acts of terrorism linked to September 11.

Kashmir is the main locus of the two countries' dispute. There is much history on why disagreements over Kashmir have created political problems: they began with the handing over of Kashmir to India in 1947 and have continued with rigged elections, poor governance, military occupation, and indigenous and Pakistani-supported militancy, up to the present day.

The risk of nuclear war between India and Pakistan arising from the Kashmir dispute remains high. Local elections in both Pakistan and Kashmir over the next few months might prevent war till then, while affecting the dynamics of the future. The United States is keenly concerned with the possibility of war and has been actively engaged in diplomacy, with more senior American officials visiting South Asia in 2002 than at any time in the past.

Indian and Pakistani politics have also taken new turns. In India, the ruling NDA is dominated by the BJP, a party with past links to militant Hinduism. India is constitutionally secular and Muslims have played an important political role, though more as a vote-bank (comprising 14 percent of the population) and less, particularly in recent times, as influential decision-makers. This influence may be set to decline further. Economic uncertainties and the polarization of religious communities in some areas (after sectarian riots) have led the BJP to believe that a return to its aggressive roots might be politically successful. This leads to a need for understanding of how India's future will be affected by its great religions, Hinduism and Islam.

In Pakistan, recent political developments have concentrated power almost entirely in the hands of President Musharraf, a situation that may persist after its upcoming elections. This lack of institutionalization of political processes and power poses new risks to the security environment in the subcontinent.

Nearly 200 died in the bombing of Paddy's Irish Bar and the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali, Indonesia, on 12 October -- the worst toll from terror anywhere since 11 September 2001. In the Philippines, terrorists have struck five times in the last month alone. Also in September, suspected terrorist Omar al-Faruq apparently told his CIA interrogators that US $74,000 had been transferred from the Middle East to Southeast Asia to fund a planned attack on U.S. Navy ships docked in Indonesia. Cutting off terrorist financing has been and remains a priority in the American war on terror. What exactly is the nature of the problem of terrorist financing in Southeast Asia? How should the United States, other governments, and international agencies respond to this challenge? What strategies and tactics are most and least likely to succeed? What are the obstacles to that success, and how can these too be addressed? What has been and will be the role of the U.S. Pacific Command in seeking and implementing the answers to these questions? Leif Rosenberger has been the economic adviser to the commander of American forces in the Pacific since 1998. As chair of the Pacific Command's Economics and Security Working Group, he works at the intersection of economic and security issues related to the war on terrorism in the Asia Pacific region. Prior to coming to Camp Smith, where the Command is headquartered, Dr. Rosenberger was a professor of economics at the U.S. Army War College, where he held the General Douglas MacArthur Academic Chair of Research.

Carter J. Eckert is Professor of Korean History and Director of the Korea Institute at Harvard University. Since 1985, he has been teaching Korean history at Harvard and working to build up the Harvard Korean studies program there. He is the author of a number of books and articles, including Offspring of Empire: The Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, which received the John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asian History from the American Historical Association, as well as the John Whitney Hall Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. Currently he is engaged in several projects relating to modern Korean history, including the Cambridge History of Korea, and a study of the late president of South Korea, Park Chung Hee, and the role of the military in South Korea's national development.

The past few years of political, economic, and social turbulence in Indonesia have led observers to wonder: "What is Indonesia?" Implicit in this question are others: "What has Indonesia been?" "What is it becoming?" and "What will become of it?"

To explore and debate possible answers, a roundtable has been scheduled for 5 April at the annual convention of the Association for Asian Studies in Washington DC. The six analysts who will speak at the roundtable have prepared brief essays--two or three pages each--that have been posted in easily downloadable form on the Asia/Pacific Research Center's website, at .

The most prominent of these analysts is Goenawan Mohamad, arguably the leading public intellectual in Indonesia today. "An Unfinished World" is his websited response to the question "What is Indonesia?" Those planning to hear Goenawan on 8 April here at Stanford need not have read his essay to understand his talk, which will go beyond his written words, but are welcome to download, print, and read it.

Goenawan Mohamad has for many years championed press freedom in Indonesia. In 1963, under the leftward regime of the country's first president, Sukarno, he signed a cultural manifesto against "socialist realism" in the arts. The manifesto was soon condemned as "counter-revolutionary." In 1964 the regime banned writings by independent-minded intellectuals such as Goenawan. In 1967 he returned from Europe to join a student newspaper that had opposed Sukarno's rule. Seven years later, the paper was banned by Sukarno's successor, Suharto. In the meantime, Goenawan had become chief editor of a weekly newsmagazine, Ekspres, and been fired by its owner for opposing government interference in a union of Indonesian journalists. Goenawan then helped to found a new weekly newsmagazine, Tempo, and became its chief editor. In 1984 Suharto banned the journal for two months because of critical coverage of the country's ruling party. Ten years later, Tempo was banned indefinitely for having criticized one of Suharto's cabinet ministers. The journal soon resurfaced on the Internet, but would not reappear in print until after Suharto's fall in 1998. Since 1999, in Jakarta, Goenawan has managed a community of media, cultural, and political activists dedicated to freedom of thought and expression. Over the course of his career, he has published books of essays and poetry, written a libretto for an opera that premiered in Seattle in 1999, and held visitorships at Harvard and UCLA, among other institutions.

The success of India's export-oriented software industry is well known. Whether information technology (IT) can contribute to development beyond the obvious income effects generated by software exports depends on how pervasive are IT's impacts on the economy, ranging from improving the efficiency of existing businesses, to enabling new kinds of goods and services. In a developing country such as India, it is of particular interest whether such benefits can reach the poor, and even help in directly reducing the deprivations associated with poverty. Professor Singh's talk and paper will examine two ongoing experiments that aim to provide IT-based services to rural populations in India. Several features distinguish these experiments from others: a combination of public and private efforts, with "nonprofit" organizations acting as catalysts; goals of commercial sustainability, both for the local entrepreneurs and the nonprofits; and an eclectic approach to the services that are sought to be provided. The paper's main contribution is to draw some preliminary lessons from comparing two different approaches in localities that are geographically close and economically similar. While the ultimate goals of the two organizations studied are quite similar, he identifies some important differences in implementation that may have more general implications for the success of such experiments. Nirvikar Singh is currently Director of the Business Management Economics Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he is Professor of Economics. He teaches courses on business strategy, technology and innovation, and electronic commerce, as well as graduate microeconomic theory. He has consulted for the World Bank and for high-tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. Professor Singh's current research topics are electronic commerce, business strategy, technology and innovation, governance and economic reform in India, federalism, international water disputes, and economic growth.