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.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) which is the country's market regulator has recently released its draft rules on corporate governance. Mr. L.K. Singhvi will discuss the SEBI draft. The Securities and Exchange Board of India is India's primary regulator of financial markets. A member of the Indian Civil Service, Mr. Singhvi heads SEBI's Investigation, Enforcement and Surveillance Departments and its Derivative and Venture Capital Fund Departments. Prior to joining SEBI, he held positions in the Indian Revenue Service and the Income Tax Department. When India began reform in 1991, Mr.Singhvi undertook the important assignment of the Director of Enforcement of Foreign Exchange Regulations and was also a member of the committee for dilution of Foreign Exchange Regulations. Mr. Singhvi has participated both in national and international conferences especially in the area of capital market and is also an active member of the Asia Pacific Regional Committee on Enforcement.

Air Chief Marshal S.K. Mehra will be discussing the formulation of the doctrine by the National Security Advisory Board. Since it was made public, the Doctrine has received both domestic and international reactions. Air Chief Marshal Mehra will discuss these reactions as expressed in the media. While in the Service, Air Chief Marshal S.K. Mehra progressed from junior to middle levels in operational fighter units specializing in both air defence and strike roles, and commanded key operational squadrons and major Air Force fighter bases. The senior staff appointments held by him include Director of Air Staff Inspection, Director of Personnel (Officers), Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Operations), and Deputy Chief of the Air Staff. He held the appointment of Air Officer commanding-in-Chief, South Western Air Command with the responsibility of all air operations in the sector, prior to being appointed as the Chief of the Air Staff in 1988. He retired in 1991 on completion of the three-year tenure as the Air Chief. Presently, he is on the Governing Council of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), and a member of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies-both located in New Delhi. He has also been nominated by the Government of India to the National Security Advisory Board.

The great economist, Alfred Marshall, said of industrial districts: "The mysteries of the trade...are as it were in the air...." This seminar reports on a project that addresses the "mysteries" of the Valley (at least to many of the people who want to replicate it). Key topics to be discussed are a habitat that is unmatched in its ability to create new firms and take ideas to market rapidly, the edge provided by communities of practice, the high quality and highly mobile labor force, the various roles of government in the rise of the Valley, and how changes in technology and markets have favored it. Henry S. Rowen is Director of the Asia/Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Edward B. Rust professor emeritus at the University's Graduate School of Business. From 1989 to 1991, Rowen was the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the U.S. Department of Defense. He was also chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 1981 to 1983, served as president of the RAND Corporation from 1968 to 1972 and was assistant director of the U.S. Bureau of the budget from 1965 to 1966. He recently was the editor of Behind East Asian Growth: The Political and Social Foundations of Prosperity, published by Routledge Press, 1998. At the present time, he is co-editing a book on how the Silicon Valley system of innovation and entrepreneurship works. The next phase of this project will examine high technology centers in Asia.

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.