China's software industry is at an inflexion point. For the past decade, China has been in the shadow of India's spectacular success in the IT outsourcing industry. While changes are underway, many challenges remain. However, it is possible to build software development teams in China, collaborating with teams in the United States, to be as good as software development teams anywhere in the world.

Dr. Liu will discuss his experience as Chairman and CEO of Augmentum, a value-added software development services company that has grown in two years to more than 450 people worldwide, 90% of them at Augmentum's development facility in Shanghai. Sixty percent of Augmentum's work is high-value added such as total products and solutions, from architecture to system integration test. All their customers are in North America -- many of them leaders in their respective industries.

Leonard Liu has spent 30 years in the systems industry, with a track record of developing innovative computing technologies into successful businesses. Most recently, he served as president of ASE Group, a leading provider of IC test and packaging services, having held roles as Chairman and CEO of Walker Interactive Systems, COO of Cadence Design Systems, and President of Acer Group. He was an early champion of outsourcing to India and China at Cadence and Walker. Dr. Liu began his career at IBM where he was responsible for the creation and implementation of SQL and the management of CICS, SNA and AIX, eventually overseeing the worldwide Database and Language lines-of-business. He received his undergraduate degree from Taiwan University and his Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Part of SPRIE's Greater China and the Globalization of R&D seminar series

The lecture will be organized around 4 questions: The French vote of May 29, volatile or structural? French European policy after May 29, which orientations, and which influence in Europe? Which effects on the EU and its trajectory? Has the NON been "worth it"?

Following the recent elections in Germany, Heinz Bude will explain the election results and discuss the current political climate in Germany in terms of the larger historical and global perspective.

The End of '68:

One could call it a return of the vanished. After German society determined that the Federal Republic had only become a western, liberal country as a result of the Uprising of 1968, debates continue on how to view this place of remembrance of the post-war period. This is due to a surprising actualization and sobering historization of the Uprising at an exhibition at the Berliner Kunstwerke. Here, the attractiveness of 1968 is directly linked to the RAF. Not the disparateness but the unity of protest and terror represents the lure of the matter. This re-labeling of 68 as a form of "radical chic" finds its confirmation in more recent historical research that proves that no firewall exists between 68 and the RAF. The terror of the RAF did not represent an inversion of the protest of 68, but was constitutive for the entire movement. There is no innocence, no learning, only the successful disappearance of a bout of tragic political passions.

Then what was 1968? What must dismay us in retrospect, and what has taken roots in the cultural superstructure? Perhaps the unfinished debate between Jürgen Habermas and Karl Heinz Bohrer must be resumed: What about 1968 was universalistic emancipation and what was extremist surrealism?

Dr. Kwon will examine the electoral effects of issue salience of unemployment. While increasing employment volatility has spawned exciting research, evidence of how unemployment affects voter choice is inconclusive. Professor Kwon refines partisan voting theory by focusing on issue salience of unemployment and the dynamics of voter choice. Voters are more likely to make a transition to support Left parties when they identify unemployment as the most important and salient issue, while there is no effect of issue salience of unemployment on loyal Left voter behavior. His study also examines voter heterogeneity in the link between issue salience and the probability of transition to Left. Analysis of a transition model using the 1997 Korean presidential election survey finds supporting evidence.

Hyeok Yong Kwon (Ph.D., Cornell University) is an assistant professor in political science at Korea University. Before joining Korea University, he taught at Texas A&M University. His research interests include political economy, voting behavior and mass public opinion, and political methodology. His recent works explore economic insecurity and the dynamics of voter choice in comparative perspective. Also, he works on the relationship between government partisanship and welfare spending in OECD countries. Previous publications include "Targeting Public Spending in a New Democracy: Evidence from South Korea" British Journal of Political Science (2005) and "Economic Reform and Democratization: Evidence from Latin America and Post-Socialist Countries" British Journal of Political Science (2004).

The pace of policy reform is important in new democracies, where the status quo policies, established by non-democratic regimes, may be far from the preferences of popular majorities. Slowing policy reform slows down governmental implementation of democratic policy mandates. This, in turn, may offset (at least partly) the positive effects of broader participation and greater accountability.

Whether the net impact of procedural reform is to accelerate or to slow policy reform depends on the particular procedures involved, and the political context. In this paper, the authors consider a procedure that, on the surface, appears likely to accelerate reform, thereby promoting change in the policy status quo. This is a sunset rule.

This paper focuses on the sunset rule adopted in South Korea, at the end of the Kim Young Sam administration. Kim's support for the sunset rule at the end of his term is puzzling. Why would a lame duck president support a rule that would seem to limit the life of the regulations passed in his own term?

Jeeyang Rhee Baum, is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. She earned her Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include comparative political institutions, administrative law, and bureaucracies with a particular emphasis on East Asia. Her most recent publications include: "Presidents Have Problems Too: The Logic of Intra-branch Delegation in East Asian Democracies", British Journal of Political Science (forthcoming) and "Breaking Authoritarian Bonds: The Political Origins of the Taiwan Administrative Procedure Act", Journal of East Asian Studies.

This event will be chaired by SIIS Senior Fellow and CDDRL Research Associate, Gail Lapidus. Speakers will include Professor Vladimer Papava, Member of Georgian Parliament, and Senior Fellow of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, Ambassador Archil Gegeshidze, Senior Fellow at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, and Temuri Yakobashvili, Executive Vice President of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies.