William Brown (Bill) is an economist and senior research analyst with CENTRA Technology, Inc. of Northern Virginia, specializing in North Asia-area economics. He is also a member of the adjunct faculty of George Mason University's graduate school of public policy where he teaches courses on Asian economic development and international trade.

Bill has extensive experience as an economic analyst in the US government, having worked in the Chief Economist's Office of the Commerce Department, as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Economics in the National Intelligence Council, and as an eco-nomic analyst in the CIA's Office of Economic Research where he focused on his research on the North Korean and Chinese economies. He served for two years in the US Embassy in Seoul and has traveled extensively in the region, including a trip last summer across the DMZ into North Korea.

Mr. Brown writes occasionally for the Chosun Ilbo in Seoul and speaks on Korean and Chinese issues to a number of Asian and US audiences. He holds an M.A. in economics from Washington University, Missouri with most of his Ph.D. work completed, and a B.A. in International Studies from Rhodes College, Tennessee. He grew up in Kwangju, South Korea as the son and grandson of Presbyterian missionaries and speaks and reads some Korean and Chinese.

Hosted by the Walter H. Shorenstein Forum as part of its ongoing seminar series on North Korea.

About Mr. Chu

Yun-han Chu is Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica and Professor of Political Science at National Taiwan University. He serves concurrently as the president of Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. Professor Chu received his Ph. D. in political science from the University of Minnesota and joined the faculty of National Taiwan University in 1987. He was a visiting associate professor at Columbia University in 1990-1991. Professor Chu specializes in politics of Greater China, East Asian political economy and democratization.

He currently serves on the editorial board of Journal of Democracy, International Studies Quarterly, Pacific Affairs, China Review, Journal of Contemporary China, and Journal of East Asian Studies. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of eleven books. Among his recent English publications are Crafting Democracy in Taiwan (Institute for National Policy Research, 1992), Consolidating Third-Wave Democracies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), China Under Jiang Zemin (Lynne Reinner, 2000), and The New Chinese Leadership: Challenges and Opportunities after the 16th Party Congress (Cambridge University Press 2004). His works also appeared in some leading journals including World Politics, International Organization, China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, and many others.

Often those who report or analyze state repression emphasize its intensity without exploring its logic. Drawing on his latest book, Resisting Dictatorship: Repression and Protest in Southeast Asia (2004), Prof. Boudreau will treat state repression as a strategic activity designed to undercut threats, defeat rivals, and strengthen new regimes with reference to the dictatorships of Ne Win in Burma, Suharto in Indonesia, and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. He will highlight state capacity, social challenges, and how they interact in struggles for power. By asking what state repressions seems designed to accomplish, Boudreau seeks to develop a more fully political understanding of state violence in relation to social resistance.

Vincent Boudreau heads the Department of Political Science and the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies at the City College of New York. His many publications include a unique study of the internal dynamics of anti-regime activism in the Philippines, Grassroots and Cadre in the Protest Movement (2001). He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1993.

Regional financial cooperation in East Asia is proceeding with unprecedented intensity. Latest developments include creation by the regional central bankers group of two Asian bond funds and the launching of an Asian Bond Market Initiative by the finance ministers of ASEAN + 3 (China, Japan, South Korea). Some observers continue to attribute such cooperation to sharpened antagonism between East Asia and the West since the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. But this view overlooks a key internal driver: China's remarkable shift toward a more proactive stance toward regional cooperation. Current 2005 East Asian financial cooperation is motivated by factors that differ considerably from those observed in the immediate aftermath of the Asian financial crisis and with implications that extend beyond East Asia.

Jennifer Amyx is a 2004-2005 Shorenstein Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Research Center. She is the author of Japan's Financial Crisis: Institutional Rigidity and Reluctant Change (2004), articles on East Asian financial cooperation, and a book-in-progress on the latter topic. Since earning a Stanford PhD in political science in 1998 she has held fellowships at Australian National University and been a visiting scholar at several Japanese financial policy and research institutions including the Bank of Japan.

Tex Abe, President and CEO of Sumisho Electronics Co., Ltd., has lead the Company since June 2002. During his tenure, he carried out management reforms including several M&As and board structure change. Prior to joining the Company, he was president and CEO of Presidio Venture Partners, LLC, a leading corporate venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, where he made his mark in new-venture funding and management. Presidio is a vehicle for early to mid stage IT investment, backed by a major Japanese trading company, Sumitomo Corporation.

Abe has more than 20 years of experience in Sumitomo, where he developed his career on the information technology, utility, and independent power industries. Through assignments in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angels, Houston, and Tokyo, he has gained expertise in project development and management, project finance, corporate management, full turnkey contracting, and major equipment sales and marketing.

Richard Bush is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. The Center serves as a locus for research, analysis, and debate to enhance policy development on the pressing political, eco-nomic, and security issues facing Northeast Asia and U.S. interests in the region.

Bush came to Brookings in July 2002, after serving almost five years as the Chairman and Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the mechanism through which the United States Government conducts substantive relations with Taiwan in the absence of diplomatic relations.

Dr. Bush began his professional career in 1977 with the China Council of The Asia Society. In July 1983 he became a staff consultant on the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. In January 1993 he moved up to the full committee, where he worked on Asia issues and served as liaison with Democratic Members. In July 1995, he became National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and a member of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which coordinates the analytic work of the intelligence committee. He left the NIC in September 1997 to become head of AIT.

Richard Bush received his undergraduate education at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He did his graduate work in political science at Columbia University, getting an M.A. in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1978. He is the author of a num-ber of articles on U.S. relations with China and Taiwan, and of At Cross Purposes, a book of essays on the history of America's relations with Taiwan.

Co-hosted with the Hoover Institution.