Few will dispute that the essence of our times can be conveyed by two simple words: " Global" and "Change". Economies, technologies, information, media, culture, and indeed security issues have been vastly internationalized and transformed in the incredibly short period of the half century following World War II . The world is being consumed by the forces of change driven by the engines of technology and geoeconomics. Economic change and technological development, like wars or sports, are usually not beneficial to all. Progress only benefits those groups of nations that are able to take advantage of newer methods of science, just as they damage those that are less prepared technologically, culturally, and politically to respond to change. Only societies free of rigid doctrinal orthodoxy and possessing attributes such as the freedoms to inquire, dispute, and experiment; a belief in the possibilities of improvement; a concern for the practical rather than the abstract; and rationalism that defies mandarin codes, religious dogmas, and traditional folklore, are likely to prosper in the new millennium. In any case, we must look with caution into the future. History teaches us that the only thing we can be certain of is that we will be surprised; our vision may well turn out to be distorted and myopic, our best guesses will often be wrong and we are likely to be disappointed in our expectations. We can only be certain of continuing conflict on a technology-driven planet with concurrent dwindling resources and increasing population.

In 1975Ð76 the fall of Saigon was followed by national reunification and the establishment of the Socialist Republic. Access to the Mekong Delta was widely expected to facilitate rapid neo-Stalinist industrialization and the appearance of a powerful military threat to capitalist SEA. But this did not happen. By 1981 partial reforms had permitted all state enterprises to operate in markets and some degree of agricultural decollectivisation. In the second half of the 1980s there was a clear de-Stalinization of everyday life. And by 1989Ð90 a recognizable market economy had emerged. Since then the Vietnamese Communist Party has, with some success, negotiated a major opening-up of the country to foreign contacts. Vietnam has joined ASEAN, and has seen the emergence of land, labor, and capital markets, and the confused processes by which classes form. Fundamental economic and political change has therefore occurred. Growth has been rather fast and the use of state violence minimal. Politically, for the still-Leninist VCP, the shift from Plan to Market has been a great success. What is the political economy basis for this? Despite emergent capitalist classes and a market economy, the political economy of "post-transition" Vietnam is heavily marked by its recent history, and remains very different from other ASEAN members. Notwithstanding revolutionary change, dualities common to both the traditional and modern political economies have offered great potential for political restructuring. In this sense "development doctrines" are perhaps less exotic and more indigenous than elsewhere in SEA. This facilitates relatively harmonious political adaptation and is the key to understanding change. For example, wide rural land access, with a collective tinge in the most densely populated areas, has a strong and pervasive effect upon the macro political economy. "Voice and exit" are enhanced. Thus we see rather high levels of migration, and risk bearing be farmers. Rural GDP has grown fast through the 1990s. Also, real wages in urban areas tend to be higher and the labor regime less brittle. What are the political implications of such a land regime? At the end of the day, one reason for the lack of extensive state violence against the population seems to be that the party/state has sufficient sources of support and power for tense economic issues in the rural areas to be fought out without property rights needing violence to enforce them. These issues are fought out locally (within cooperatives and communes) and in macro contexts (access to world markets). But in the rural areas the state does not, apparently, need to support particular economic interests for its survival. One reason for this is that the "land issue" has been addressed through the adaptation of socialist models, so that large-scale land property is not (yet?) a major issue. Dominant groups in the rural areas do not depend upon land access for their incomes. Adam Fforde is a development economist. He holds an Oxford MA (Engineering Science and Economics), a London MSc (Economics) and a Cambridge PhD (Economics). He studied Vietnamese in Hanoi during 1978/79 and was a visiting scholar at the National Economics University (Hanoi) in 1985Ð86. He lived in Vietnam from 1987 to 1992 while working as an advisor to the Swedish aid program, and in Australia from 1992 to 1999, where he was a visiting fellow at the ANU and Chairman of Aduki Pty Ltd (Consultants). He is now senior fellow at the SEA Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He has published on topics including the economic development of north Vietnam prior to 1975, agricultural cooperatives, and the transition from plan to market. He is currently working on class formation and the emergence of factor markets in the 1990s, industrial reform since the early 1960s, and Vietnamese development doctrine.

Part of the California-Asia Connection Seminar series. California, and the Bay Area in particular, is exercising a defining influence on the global economy. This is based on the state's dominance in key technology sectors, and the capacity for innovation. Dr. Randolph will present research benchmarking the Bay Area economy against comparable regions nationwide, across 35 indicators of performance, and argue that California's global leadership in this domain is sustainable only so long as the host environment nurtures innovation and entrepreneurship. California's trade "policy" is most appropriately understood, therefore, as the rules and regulations governing the state's labor and human capital issues, and the provision of critical infrastructure. R. Sean Randolph was appointed president of the Bay Area Economic Forum on June 1, 1998. The Bay Area Economic Forum, a nonprofit, public-private partnership of business, government, academic, labor, and community leaders works to foster a dynamic and competitive economic environment and to enhance the overall quality of life in the nine-county San Francisco Bay region. Dr. Randolph most recently served as director of international trade for the State of California. As senior manager of the California Trade and Commerce Agency's Office of Export Development, he directed international business development programs that stimulate exports and introduce California companies to key overseas markets. Before joining the State of California, Dr. Randolph served as Managing Director of the RSR Pacific Group, an international business consulting firm specializing in Asia and Latin America. From 1988Ð92 he was International Director General of the Pacific Basin Economic Council, a fifteen-nation international business organization composed of leading U.S., Asian, and Latin American corporations. His professional career also includes extensive experience in the U.S. Government on the U.S. Congress staff (1976Ð80), and the White House staff (1980Ð81). He subsequently served in the U.S. State Department on the Policy Planning Staff as Special Adviser for Policy in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs and as Deputy/Ambassador-at-Large for Pacific Basin affairs (1981Ð85). From 1985Ð88 he served in the U.S. Department of Energy as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs. A graduate (Magna Cum Laude) of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, Dr. Randolph holds a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and studied at the London School of Economics. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar Association, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the U.S. National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the U.C. Berkeley Center for APEC, the Southwest Center of Environmental Research and Policy, and the Headlands Institute. Dr. Randolph writes and speaks frequently on economic development and international business and economic issues.

As generally described, Japan's development of the internet industry has fallen behind even other Asian economies. Even though Japan's first trial of policy reformation in the mid 1980s was relatively early, what made this critical delay? Shin Yasunobe will present and evaluate Japan's policy track record in the 1990s. He will also present unique aspects of Internet development recently observed in Japan, and their implications for the future. Shin Yasunobe, formerly a high-ranking official with the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) has been appointed executive director at Stanford Japan CenterÑResearch, located in Kyoto. Yasunobe is a twenty-two year veteran of MITI who left his post as director of its Electronic Policy Division in the Machinery and Information Industries Bureau to take the reins of a new project at Stanford Japan CenterÑResearch. This project will be a set of comparative studies on the international dimensions of the Internet and e-commerce, with particular focus on the Asian economies.

Since the 1960s, television has been a fixture of the Japanese household, and NHK's TV news has until very recently been the dominant, and most trusted, source of political information for the Japanese citizen. NHK's news style is distinctive among the broadcasting systems of industrialized countries; it emphasizes facts over interpretation and gives unusual priority to coverage of the national bureaucracy. In his talk, Krauss will argue that this approach is not simply a reflection of Japanese culture, but a result of the organization and processes of NHK and their relationship with the state. These factors had profound consequences for the state's postwar re-legitimization, while the commercial networks' recent challenge to NHK has helped engender the wave of cynicism currently faced by the state. Professor Krauss is a leading expert on Japanese Politics, U.S.-Japan relations, and Japan's political economy. He also is the director of the International Career Associates Program (ICAP) at IR/PS. His most recent book, Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK and Television News (Cornell University Press, 2000), discusses Japan's mammoth public broadcaster, and its relationship to and consequences for politics. He recently received a prestigious Abe Fellowship to conduct research on Japanese foreign policy decision making in APEC and its impact on U.S.-Japan relations. Krauss is co-editor of Media and Politics in Japan and has co-edited and written contributing articles for Democracy in Japan and Conflict in Japan. He wrote a monograph for the Foreign Policy Association, entitled Japan's Democracy: How Much Change? and has authored many articles in professional journals of political science and Asian studies.

When the Asian Crisis hit in 1997, California looked particularly vulnerable. Foreign markets had been of growing importance to the state's economy over the previous decade, and California's trade was heavily weighted toward Asia. The US trade deficit had been rising steadily and the rapid depreciation of Asian currencies threatened to dampen demand for the state's goods, while at the same time flooding it with imports. Yet the State's economy weathered this storm quite well. Why? Kroll and Bardhan will present research on California's linkages with the global economy which help explain this outcome. Additionally, Kroll and Bardhan will present research showing how California is becoming integrated with the global economy in other, more complex ways. California-based firms have expanded their sales and production activities throughout the world, and production that occurs within the state has come be increasingly linked to Asia for imports of intermediate inputs. Cheaper inputs and finished goods in turn have moved the economy to higher value-added sectors and related services. Kroll and Bardhan will discuss the some consequences of these linkages and analyze their effects on the employment structure of the state. Dr. Cynthia Kroll is Regional Economist at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, at the University of California at Berkeley. She holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Berkeley's Department of City and Regional Planning, and serves as an advisor to the California Office of Economic Research and the Association of Bay Area Governments Ashok Bardhan is a research associate at the Fisher Center, and served formerly as an officer with the Reserve Bank of India.

Simon Hix is a Senior Lecturer in European Union Politics and Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is author of Political Parties in the European Union (Macmillan, 1997) and The Political System of the European Union (Macmillan, 1999). He is co-editor of the journal European Union Politics (Sage) and Director of the European Parliament Research Group.

On January 1 Sweden assumed the rotating chairmanship of the European Union. While serving as the Swedish EU Commissioner from 1995 to 1999, Gradin was in charge of immigration, home affairs and justice. She will discuss Sweden's priorities for the EU, and the results of the December EU summit in Nice, France, with its associated Treaty of Nice. Gradin has a distinguished career: she was Vice-Chair of the national Federation of Social Democratic Women in Sweden, Chair of the Council of Europe's Committee on Migration, Refugees and Demography, and Minister with responsibility for immigrant and equality affairs at the Ministry of Labor (1982-86). From 1968 to 1992 she was a member of Parliament and a member of the parliamentary Standing Committees on Education and on Finance, as well as a delegate to the Council of Europe. From 1986 to 1991 Gradin was Minister with responsibility for foreign trade at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and from 1992-94 she was Sweden's ambassador to Austria and Slovenia and to IAEA and UN in Vienna.

S.B. Woo is a physicist and former Lieutenant Governor of Delaware. He was born in Shanghai, China, and came to the United States from Hong Kong at the age of eighteen. He received his B.S., summa cum laude, in mathematics and physics from Georgetown College in Kentucky and his Ph. D. in physics from Washington University in St. Louis in 1964. His other experiences include being trustee of the University of Delaware, an Institute Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. As OCA's (Organization of Chinese Americans) National President in 1991, his vision was to help make the Asian- American an equal partner in the making of the American Dream. After politics, Dr. Woo returned to University of Delaware to teach Physics. He enjoys greatly using the methodology of physics to do research in economics, education and national technology policy. He is currently working on a project called The 80-20 Initiative.