His Excellency Sung Chul Yang, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the United States, is a well-known political scientist and author with a long and distinguished career in academia and politics. From 1996 to the time of his posting in Washington, Ambassador Yang served as a member of the Korean National Assembly. He also served as president of the Unification and Policy Forum, and chairman of the International Cooperation Committee for the National Congress for New Politics during this period. He worked as vice chair of the Unification and Foreign Affairs Committee, and was a member of the Political Reform Committee. Most recently, Ambassador Yang served as an executive member of the New Millennium Democratic Party's 21st Century National Affairs Advisory Committee. Outside of the National Assembly, Ambassador Yang has been involved in government and politics for many years. He served as the secretary-general of the Association of Korean Political Scientists in North America and as president of the Korean Association of International Studies. He has also been a member of the Advisory Committees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of National Defense, and the National Unification Board. In addition to his involvement in government, Ambassador Yang has had a successful career in academia. He was a professor at Eastern Kentucky University from 1970-75 and at the University of Kentucky from 1975-86. He has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University, Pembroke State University, Indiana University, and Seoul National University. From 1987-94 Ambassador Yang held the position of dean of Academic Affairs at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. Ambassador Yang is the author of several books on Korean issues, including The North and South Korean Political Systems: A Comparative Analysis (Westview, 1994). He is also a much sought after contributor to many political science journals. He has been interviewed often by leading newspapers, magazines and radio stations from around the world. Ambassador Yang received his doctorate in Political Science from the University of Kentucky (1970), earlier receiving an MA from the University of Hawaii (1967), and a BA from Seoul National University (1964). From 1960-62 he served in the Korean Army.

For more than twenty years, labor-intensive industrialization in developing countries has generated controversy about "sweatshop" conditions in the factories of multinational companies and their regional subcontractors. In recent years, U.S. university students have vigorously opposed such factories as sites of abuse and exploitation. Others reply that such places offer their mainly young and female workers much-needed income and independence. Much of this controversy has focused on Southeast Asia as a prime location of facilities for the manufacturing of apparel, footwear, toys, and other labor-intensive exports. Why do sweatshops exist in these countries? Why are they tolerated? Why are they assailed? Are the objections justified? What should be done? University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Business School Professor Linda Lim has helped pioneer empirical research on young women factory workers in Southeast Asia. She has published extensively on this and other labor-related subjects. She has also served as a frequent consultant to the International Labor Organization, most recently on the globalization debate. She was a member of the University of Michigan's Advisory Committee on Labor Standards and Human Rights in 1999-2000.

In Southeast Asia, partial recovery from financial crisis has been accompanied by signs of the start of a local version of America's internet business boom. E-businesses and dotcom start-ups have emerged. Political and business leaders have touted the virtues of the so-called "new economy" and its potential for resolving the post-crisis malaise that still affects parts of the region. But is the e-business revolution in Southeast Asia real? Are technologies and business practices being transformed? Or is the "new economy" mainly hype and wishful thinking? Does e-business spell the death of monopolies and conglomerates at the hands of agile new entrants? Or is it popular because it provides an alternative to fundamental business restructuring? And what do the answers to these questions imply for economic recovery and political reform? Linda Lim is the associate director of the International Institute and Director of the Southeast Asia Business Program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She has written and lectured extensively on political economy, economic development, and business practices in Southeast Asia, where she recently completed preliminary field research on the appearance and growth of electronic business.

The complex issues arising from child labor have been addressed in several of the most significant ways--yielding the most important lessons--in the Asia Pacific region. It is in the Asia Pacific region too, that the greatest number of child laborers live. This conference will address the complexities of child labor and review the range of key "solutions" to improve the condition of children--especially impoverished, working children--in the region. Some people claim that abusive child labor is an inevitable byproduct of agrarian and developing economies. But is this accurate? What measures will alleviate abuses and hasten the elimination of exploitation? The United States is now the largest contributor to the ILO's International Programme on the Eradication of Child Labor. At the same time, the United States and US-based business have been accused of contributing to increases in child labor, through trade practices that allegedly expand inequality, or through the strong U.S. role in promoting neo-liberal economic policies through the activities of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF. What role can the United States play in alleviating the problem--and what role is it playing now? Are the critiques accurate? The term "child labor" conjures up images of poor young people, working in unsafe conditions, receiving inadequate wages, their health imperiled for life and their opportunity for education denied. What policies are appropriate to bring the worst practices to a swift though humane end? Much of the debate has been highly polemical, but more recently, the tone of the discussion has begun to change. It has begun to focus on the concrete measures that can be undertaken to improve the conditions under which children work, and to eliminate the abuses and exploitation to which millions of children are subjected. Participants in this roundtable will share the latest empirical findings on child labor in Asia and identify policies that are at the cutting edge in dealing with this issue.

Hailed by the New York Times as one of China's most influential intellectuals, Liu Junning is the founder and editor of the Journal Res Publica. Formerly a Fellow at the Institute of Political Science at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Liu is responsible for the Chinese translation of numerous works on democracy and classic liberal thought. In 1999 his collected essays were published as Republic, Democracy, Constitutionalism. He holds a doctorate in political theory from Beijing University.

Like a double-edged sword, the recent conflict in East Timor challenged Indonesia and the international community alike. For Indonesia, the crisis and its resolution offered a chance for military reform, yet threatened national unity. For international donors, the chance to defend human rights and implement self-determination carried a risk of provoking nationalist resentment against foreign intervention for democratic change.This talk will focus on the international community and its donor countries and agencies. How did they react to the conflict in East Timor? What were their strategies? How did their actions affect Indonesia -- not only its East Timor policies but also the course of its own democratic transition? Looking back on them now, do the crisis and its outcome lessons for the feasibility of foreign intervention to achieve domestic political reform? If so, what are they? If not, why not? And what do the answers to these questions imply for the democratic prospect in developing countries more generally?

The story of South Asia is that of missed opportunities. Mr. Burki will take a look at South Asia in comparison to East Asia. Mr. Shahid Javed Burki started his career as a member of the Civil Service of Pakistan. He held various positions including Director of West Pakistan Rural Works Program, Economic Advisor to the Governor and Chief Economist of West Pakistan, and Economic Consultant to the Ministry of Commerce. In 1974, Mr. Burki joined the World Bank as Senior Economist in the Policy Planning Division. He was promoted to Division Chief of the Policy Planning and Program Review Department and later became Senior Economic and Policy Advisor in the Office of the Vice President of External Relations. After becoming the Director of the International Relations Department of that vice-presidency, he was appointed Director for China and Mongolia, helping to design and implement the World Bank's lending program in China - at one point the largest Bank-financed program in the world. Mr. Burki was appointed Vice President of the Latin America and Caribbean Region and worked in this position until his retirement in August, 1999. Upon leaving the Bank, Mr. Burki was invited to head the EMP-Financial Advisors, LLC, a consulting firm located in Washington, D.C. Mr. Shahid Javed Burki was educated at Government College, Lahore; Christ Church, Oxford University (where he was a Rhodes Scholar) and Harvard University (Kennedy School and Economics Department). He holds graduate degrees in Physics and Economics.

Internet use in China has recently grown at a tremendous pace, and today there are more than 17 million users. In this talk, Harwit examines government control over the physical data pipelines and network content. He explores the management and revenue flows from the information highway, and political efforts to regulate the content that appears on Chinese computer screens. He also analyzes the post-WTO role foreign companies may have in the network's future development. He concludes that, though the telecommunications bureaucracy is keen to extract monetary profit from the Internet, political drive for control over content is muted by schizophrenic government policy, user self-censorship and, in the short run, user demographics. Eric Harwit is an Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii, and a visiting scholar at Stanford's Asia / Pacific Research Center for the 2000-2001 academic year. A 1984 graduate of Cornell University, he received a diploma from the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing in 1990, and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1992. Professor Harwit is the author of China's Automobile Industry (M.E. Sharpe, 1995), and several other articles on industrial and economic development in Asia. He is currently writing a book about the politics of telecommunication in China, and has a Fulbright research grant to conduct a study of telecommunications in rural China in mid-2001.