The East and the West have very different ideas of cultural traditions, values, and ways to maintain their traditions. Chinese women living in the Eastern tradition are increasingly exposed to the culture of the West. Because of this exposure, they often find themselves at a crossroads of the two competing value systems. Chinese women strive to maintain their traditional culture and seek to guard their values from outside influence. Yet they admire the ideas and images of freedom and individualism produced by Western culture. More and more Chinese women find themselves longing to enjoy the freedom and individualism promised by these powerful images and ideas. Professor Ma's research and talk will examine the differences that developed from these two different cultures, and attempt to draw out the significance of the influence from Western culture on Chinese women today.

As China is gradually integrated into the international economic, security, and politics system, the tension between technological self-reliance and the need to build its technological enhancement on what is available in international market, will inevitably increase. Reflecting this tension, China's encryption policy was thrust into the international limelight in late 1999 and the first half of 2000. The early encryption regulations were announced and later were clarified. A wide range of international media has covered controversies related to the encryption policy. For every nation in the world, encryption's multifaceted nature requires a painstaking effort balancing potentially competing interests. It is even more so for China, the country which will officially join the WTO at the end of 2001. The concerns of multiple stakeholders about the future of encryption technology and its impact have raised policy questions about the management and control of encryption technology. Among the questions Chinese decision makers face are the following: --How to evaluate China's current encryption policy from an international perspective? --How to justify the toughness of the original encryption regulations and the relaxation afterwards in China's complex and rapidly changing domestic and international context? The purpose of Dr. Yuan's study is to assist Chinese policymakers in analyzing the status quo of the policy, objectives, and factors affecting encryption policymaking and to offer suggestions for the future. It provides an integrated assessment of how encryption policy decisions can and might affect diverse military, commercial, and political interests in China and suggests how those interests might be balanced most effectively.

Topics to be covered: 1. Case Studies of different ventures undertaken by the speaker for different projects in China, looking at reasons for the organization structure, access to local capital, technology and talent, infrastructure availability and government relations; and outcomes relative to expectations. 2. Comparative view of India 3. Summary of how capitalism is managed in China versus India. Mr. Vivek Ragavan, who has more than twenty years of executive management experience in the telecommunications industry, was most recently president and CEO of Redback Networks. Before that he was president and CEO of Siara Systems, which merged with Redback in March 2000. Prior to Siara, Ragavan was president of the Residential Broadband Group of ADC Telecommunications, Inc., where he was responsible for ADC's telecommunication equipment businesses, focused on the broadband communication access and transport markets. Earlier, Ragavan was vice president of Engineering at General Instrument where he led the development of that company's leading digital video transport system. He has a BSEE from Northwestern University and an MSEE from Cornell University.

This seminar addresses developing an analytical framework for a comparative study of the emergence and growth dynamics of regions of high tech industrial clusters in different national contexts. We review the empirical and theoretical literature on determinants of national and regional competitiveness in high tech industries. We conclude that, while innovation and entrepreneurship have both been given increasing attention in various international benchmarking studies in recent years, their interaction and joint effects on economic dynamism -- especially at the regional and specific industrial cluster level -- have not been well-investigated. Moreover, while the number of empirical studies of specific high-tech regions has increased, especially in the United States, the influence of different national contexts and international linkages has received inadequate attention. To address these gaps, we propose the development of conceptual measures and empirical benchmark indicators that focus specifically on the regional nexus of innovation and entrepreneurship, and identify possible secondary data sources and primary data collection methodology for deriving these indicators. Some preliminary benchmarking findings comparing a number of Asian nations/regions with Silicon Valley are presented.

Poh-Kam Wong is an associate professor at the Business School, National University of Singapore, where he directs the Centre for Management of Innovation and Technopreneurship. He obtained his BSc., MSc. and Ph.D. from MIT. His current research interests include management of technological innovation, S&T policy, and high tech entrepreneurship. His publications have appeared in, among others, Information Systems Research, International Journal of Technology Management, Journal of Asian Business, and Industry and Innovation, as well as chapters in books published by Stanford University Press, MIT Press, and Oxford University Press. He has consulted widely for international agencies, government agencies in Singapore, and high tech firms in Asia. He has co-founded three technology companies and currently serves on the advisory board or board of directors of several high tech start-ups in Singapore and Malaysia. He is an advisor to two VC funds and chairman of the Business Angel Network (South East Asia). He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley in 1984 and is currently on sabbatical leave as a visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC.

Professor Nye spoke as a special guest lecturer of the Walter H. Shorenstein Forum for Asia-Pacific Studies.

In his first public appearance at Stanford University since being elected governor, Stanford graduate Gray Davis gave a speech on Asia-California ties. The address inaugurated the Walter H. Shorenstein Forum on Asia/Pacific Studies at Stanford University's Asia/Pacific Research Center.

A one-day conference organized by Shorenstein APARC brought together 110 distinguished participants from India, the United States, Israel, Taiwan, Europe, and Latin America. The program's objective was to inform and educate India's IT policymakers and practitioners on India's enabling environment with respect to regulation, governance, access to capital, and technological capabilities. The proceedings of this conference are available as an Shorenstein APARC publication, prepared by Dr. Rafiq Dossani.