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.

Prior to joining RAND in 1989, Dr. Swaine was a consultant in the business sector, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and a research associate at Harvard University. Dr. Swaine holds a Ph.D. and Masters in Political Science from Harvard University and a Bachelor's degree from George Washington University. He specializes in Chinese domestic politics and foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and East Asian international relations.

Pieter P. Bottelier recently completed a 28-year tenure at the World Bank. He served in various senior managerial and advisory capacities for programs in Asia, Africa and Latin America. His most recent positions were, until December l998, Senior Advisor to the Vice President, East Asia and Pacific Region, and Chief of the World Bank's Resident Mission in Beijing (1993-97). He now teaches at the School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, and is associated with the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington DC. He is the author of many articles on China. He studied economics and banking at the University of Amsterdam and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.