Ching Kwan Lee is Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Michigan. She is author of Gender and the South China Miracle (University of California Press, 1998). Her current research is on the transformation of the Chinese working class under market reform.

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.

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.

All-day conference on Japanese institutional reform sponsored by the Asia/Pacific Research Center, Stanford University.

• Changes in the Political System
  Speaker: Mr. Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Member of the Japanese House of Councilors and former Vice Minister of Finance, Tokyo
  Commentator: Prof. Daniel Okimoto, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University
• Changes in the Bureaucracy
  Speaker: Mr. Ryozo Hayashi, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Information and Machin- ery Industry, Tokyo
  Commentator: Prof. Hugh Patrick, Professor of International Business, Columbia Univer- sity, New York
• Changes in Business
  Speaker: Mr. Taizo Nishimuro, CEO & President of Toshiba, Tokyo
  Commentators: Mr. James Abegglen, Chairman, Asia Advisory Services, Tokyo. Mr. Hiroaki Yoshihara, Senior Partner at KPMG, Mountain View, California
• Panel Discussion on the Institutional Changes
  Prof. Hugh Patrick, Professor of International Business, Columbia University
  Prof. Tadao Kagono, Dean of the Graduate School of Business, Kobe University
  Prof. Harry Rowen, Director, Asia/Pacific Research Center, Stanford University
  Mr. Katsuhiro Nakagawa, Executive Adviser, The Tokyo Marine and Fire Insurance Co. and Former Vice Minister of MITI, Tokyo
  Mr. Dan Sneider, National/Foreign Editor, San Jose Mercury News, San Jose, CA