Lyman and Morrison will discuss the Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Independent Task Force Report on the US and Africa. The Report argues that Africa is becoming steadily more central to the United States and to the rest of the world in ways that transcend humanitarian interests. Africa now plays an increasingly significant role in supplying energy, preventing the spread of terrorism, and halting the devastation of HIV/AIDS. Africa's growing importance is reflected in the intensifying competition with China and other countries for both access to African resources and influence in this region. A more comprehensive U.S. policy toward Africa is needed, the report states, and it lays out recommendations for policymakers to craft that policy. The report is available at www.cfr.org.

Princeton N. Lyman is the Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow and Director for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. Ambassador Lyman served for over three decades at the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), completing his government service as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. He was previously Ambassador to South Africa, Ambassador to Nigeria, Director of Refugee Programs and Director of the USAID Mission to Ethiopia.

From 1999 to 2000, he was Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. Ambassador Lyman held the position of Executive Director of the Global Interdependence Initiative of the Aspen Institute (1999 to 2003) and has received the President's Distinguished Service Award and the Department of State Distinguished Honor Award. Ambassador Lyman has published on foreign policy, African affairs, economic development, HIV/AIDS, UN reform, and peacekeeping. He coauthored the Council on Foreign Relations Special Report entitled Giving Meaning to "Never Again": Seeking an Effective Response to the Crisis in Darfur and Beyond. His book, Partner to History: The U.S. Role in South Africa's Transition to Democracy, was published in 2002. He earned his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. He serves as the Co-Director of the Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Independent Task Force on Africa.

J. Stephen Morrison is Director of the Africa Program and the Task Force on HIV/AIDS at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He joined CSIS in January 2000 and in late 2001, launched the CSIS Task Force on HIV/AIDS. The task force is a multiyear project co-chaired by Senators Bill Frist (R-TN) and John Kerry (D-MA) and funded by the Gates Foundation and the Catherine Marron Foundation. Dr. Morrison co-chaired the reassessment of the U.S. approach to Sudan that laid the basis for the Bush administration push for a negotiated peace settlement, and in the summer of 2002 he organized an energy expert mission to the Sudan peace negotiations in Kenya.

From 1996 through early 2000, Dr. Morrison served on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, where he was responsible for African affairs and global foreign assistance issues. In that position, he led the State Department's initiative on illicit diamonds and chaired an interagency review of the U.S. government's crisis humanitarian programs. From 1993 to 1995, Dr. Morrison conceptualized and launched USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives; he served as the office's first Deputy Director and created post-conflict programs in Angola and Bosnia. From 1992 until mid-1993, Dr. Morrison was the Democracy and Governance Adviser to the U.S. embassies and USAID missions in Ethiopia and Eritrea. He serves as the Co-Director of the Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Independent Task Force on Africa.

On 26 December 2004, an earthquake and tsunami struck Aceh in the Indonesian archipelago, killing an estimated 130,000 people. The catastrophe was a catalyst for the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian government to come together in Helsinki to seek an end to the nationalist/separatist conflict that had wracked the territory since the 1970s. GAM agreed to drop its demand for outright independence in exchange for a high level of genuine autonomy, while the Indonesian government made various concessions, including allowing the creation of local political parties in Aceh. Jakarta wanted to end a costly, debilitating, and seemingly endless conflict; encourage needed foreign investment in the oil and gas sector; and bring the military in Aceh under civilian control. GAM, in turn, realized that the war was unwinnable; the Acehnese people had suffered enough; and many of GAM's aims could be achieved by democratic means in Indonesia's reforming political system.

Based on his unique experience as an advisor to GAM during the 2005 talks, Prof. Kingsbury will outline the peace process, explain how agreement was achieved, and comment on Aceh's future inside Indonesia.

Damien Kingsbury is director of the Masters Program in International and Community Development at Deakin University. His many publications include The Politics of Indonesia (3rd ed., 2005); South-East Asia: A Political Profile (2nd ed., 2005); and Power Politics and the Indonesian Military (2003). He has a Ph.D. and an M.A. from Monash University and an M.S. from Columbia University. He is presently writing a book on political development.

Professor Kingsbury's talk is co-sponsored with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California - Berkeley

A former career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Barbara Bodine served as US Ambassador to Yemen from 1997-2001. Ambassador Bodine spent her 30-year diplomatic career primarily in the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula, including tours as Deputy Principal Officer in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq War and Deputy Chief of Mission in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion and occupation in 1990. In 2003 Ambassador Bodine served as coordinator for post-conflict reconstruction for Baghdad and the central governorates of Iraq.

In addition to a number of assignments in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Ms. Bodine was the Associate Coordinator for Operations and subsequently acting overall Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State, Dean of the School of Professional Studies at the Foreign Service Institute and Director of East African Affairs.

Ambassador Bodine is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Secretary's Award for Valor, the Secretary's Career Achievement Award and the Department's Distinguished Service Award.

Professor Park will address the changes that have occurred in the Chinese labor market over the past quarter century, focusing on the extent to which labor market reforms have successfully created a well-functioning market for labor with a high degree of labor mobility. Like other rapidly growing developing countries, China has experienced rapid structural change featuring a steady flow of labor from agriculture to industry, and from rural areas to urban areas. As a transition economy, China has shifted gradually from planned allocation of labor in state-sector jobs to a more open labor market. Although the large magnitudes of these changes are impressive, reform of the labor market has been halting, uneven, and difficult, with much additional reform still required. Prof. Park will look at several dimensions of the Chinese labor market: labor allocation, wage setting, regional differences, and ownership sectors. He will conclude by discussing the key policy challenges that lie ahead.

Albert Park is Associate Professor of Economics and Faculty Associate of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. He is also a research affiliate at the Population Studies Center and chairs the faculty steering committee for Michigan's China Data Center. Dr. Park has been a visiting professor and researcher at Harvard University and Peking University, as well as other research institutions in China and Taiwan, and has served as a consultant for the World Bank on several projects analyzing economic development issues in China, including the Bank's current China Poverty Assessment project. Dr. Park earned a Ph.D. in applied economics from the Food Research Institute and Department of Economics at Stanford University in 1996. His research interests include economic development, economic transition, labor, applied microeconomics, and the Chinese economy. He is involved in numerous collaborative research activities in China, including several large survey projects to study labor market developments in urban areas, and rural education, health, and labor outcomes. He has published over thirty journal articles and chapters in edited volumes, and is the coeditor of a forthcoming volume titled Education and Reform in China. At Michigan, he teaches a graduate course on the microeconomics of development and an undergraduate course on the Chinese economy.

This series is co-sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University.

Minxin Pei is a senior associate and director of the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University in 1991 and taught politics at Princeton University from 1992 to 1998. His main interest is U.S.-China relations, the development of democratic political systems, and Chinese politics. He is the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 1994) and China's Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).

His research has been published in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Modern China, China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy and many edited books. His op-eds have appeared in the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and other major newspapers.

Based on recent work in Guangzhou, Xiamen, Taipei, and Hong Kong, this talk will address the relationship of NGO's to political transformation. It will focus in particular on three problems: the relation between state and society under various Chinese regimes, the relation between official and unoffical organizations, and problems of scaling up civil society organizations.

Taiwan/China Seminar Series