Stanford University

Challenges and Realities of Software Development in China

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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

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Leonard Liu Chairman and CEO, Augmentum, former executive at Cadence, Acer Group & IBM Speaker
Seminars

Taiwan's Policy Towards the Mainland

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Mr. Chiu Tai-san will speak about Taiwan's policy on cross-strait relations towards the Mainland with invited guests discussing its impact on US foreign policy.

Daniel I. Okimoto Conference Room

Chiu Tai-san Vice Chairman of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council
Conferences

We Are All Pingpu: Notes on the Pingpu Identity in Contemporary Taiwanese Society

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Since the 1980s, simultaneous trends in Taiwan toward globalization and localization have contributed to people's construction of a past promoting local solidarity. Such rewriting of Taiwanese consciousness has relied heavily on a "rediscovery" of cultural traditions corresponding to Pingpu identity. (Pingpu identity is debated as an indigenous or a mestizo identity and used to claim that Taiwan is not Chinese.) Professor Pans examination of the development of Pingpu identity over the past ten years focuses on the 1996 event "We are All Pingpu" and uses both ethnographic and historical materials to analyze the role of Pingpu identity in rewriting Taiwanese conscious-ness.

Dr. Pan's research addresses the following questions: Who are the Pingpu? Why do some Taiwanese choose to be identified as Pingu while others do not? What is the significance of Pingpu identity for present-day Taiwanese consciousness? How has Pingpu identity been constructed? How and why do people rewrite the past when an identity is being created?

This is the final seminar in the Taiwan Seminar Series hosted by Shorenstein APARC.

Okimoto Conference Room

Inghai Pan Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei,Taiwan
Seminars

ITRI-SPRIE CONFERENCE: The Greater China Capital Market for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

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Among the different types of capital resources, venture capital as practiced in Silicon Valley is broadly acknowledged as being an important constituent of a high technology, entrepreneurial habitat. In the past two decades, policy makers from different regions have learned much from its experience.

The IT industry attributes its success partly to venture capital investments in early, risky, stages. Looking ahead, other industries will emerge in the knowledge economy. Within Taiwan and Mainland China, information related industries still dominate investment, yet in Silicon Valley emerging industries including biotechnology, medical instruments and nanotechnology have recently been attracting as much venture capital as the IT industry.

Today, venture capitalists from Silicon Valley and Taiwan are probing what they perceive as growing investment opportunities in Mainland China, On the other hand, the immaturity of its private equity market and the undeveloped state of exit mechanisms there is causing venture capitalists to hesitate to made large investments. Currently, Taiwan's venture capital faces low price-earnings ratios in its 1,400 publicly listed companies. This has contributed to a decline in VC investment. The Taiwan government expects to further liberalize the financing environment to bolster it as a regional center for domestic and international corporations.

This conference will address the influence of the system of capital on regional innovation and entrepreneurship in the United States, Taiwan, and Mainland China. The focus will be on the venture capital industry, corporate venturing and other institutions of capital related to regional industrial development.

Here are some questions to be addressed in this conference:

  • What is the pattern of venture capital investing in high-tech start-ups in the Greater China Area?
  • What are the trends in this industry?
  • How, specifically, does venture capital promote innovation and entrepreneurship?
  • What are the similarities among independent venture capital funds, corporate venture funds, angel funds, and commercial bank involvements?

Conference Organization

Conference Chairman

  • Dr. Chintay Shih, Dean of College of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, and Special Advisor, Industrial Technology Research Institute

Co-chairmen

  • Dr. Paul Wang, Chairman, Taiwan Venture Capital Association
  • Dr. Henry Rowen, Co-director, SPRIE
  • Dr. William Miller, Co-director, SPRIE

Executive Director

  • Dr. Sean Wang, Director General of Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center in Industrial Technology Research Institute

Conference Secretariat

  • Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center, Industrial Technology Research Institute (IEK/ITRI)

Conference Organizing Secretariat

  • ITRI: Yi-Ling Wei, Peter Lai, Frank Lin, Shu-Chen Huang
  • TVCA: Teresa Yang, Michael Chen, Riva Su
  • SPRIE: Marguerite Gong Hancock (Stanford)/Martin Kenney (UC Davis)
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Auditorium, The Grand Hotel,
1 Chung Shan N. Road, Sec. 4, Taipei, Taiwan

Conferences

Beyond Common Knowledge: Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law

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An intensive global search is on for the "rule of law," the holy grail of good governance, which has led to a dramatic increase in judicial reform activities in developing countries. Very little attention, however, has been paid to the widening gap between theory and practice, or to the ongoing disconnect between stated project goals and actual funded activities. Beyond Common Knowledge examines the standard methods of legal and judicial reform. Taking stock of international experience in legal and judicial reform in Latin America, Europe, India, and China, this volume answers key questions in the judicial reform debate: What are the common assumptions about the role of the courts in improving economic growth and democratic politics? Do we expect too much from the formal legal system? Is investing in judicial reform projects a good strategy for getting at the problems of governance that beset many developing countries? If not, what are we missing?

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Publication Type
Books
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Stanford University Press
Authors
Erik Jensen
Thomas C. Heller

Waishengren: Exploring Chinese Diaspora Nationalism in Taiwan

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Waishengren (or mainlanders) make up about 12% of the current population in Taiwan. This is an artificial category referring to the Chinese people and their descendants who were originally from mainland China and who have been settling in Taiwan since 1945. The term can be literally translated to mean people from outside the (Taiwan) province.

Despite the diversity of social and economic backgrounds, the Waishengren have shown a strong and almost uniform tendency in opposing Taiwanese nationalism or Taiwan independence. They have shown a strong inclination in supporting a unified and strong China, though the Republic of China, not the People's Republic, is still the country that embodies their collective identity.

Dr. Chang will address the following questions: (1) why do the Waishengren act, or are perceived to act, as one "ethnic group" in Taiwan, given the differences?; (2) what were the main historical reasons for their nationalistic feelings?; (3) what are the features of Chinese diaspora nationalism in Taiwan?; (4) how does Waishengren nationalism differ from the Taiwanese and Chinese nationalism that is found in Southeast Asia?; (5) what is the general and theoretical meaning of diaspora nationalism?

Philippines Conference Room

Mau-kuei Chang Institute of Sociology, Academica Sinica, Taiwan
Seminars

Does the Anti-Secession Law Signify Greater Irrationality Towards Taiwan?

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The Anti-Secession Law recently passed by China's National People's Congress has generated a hostile response in Taiwan and sharp criticism by the U.S. government. It has been described by some as a war-authorization law. Does this signal that Beijing is on a path that reduces its scope for rational choices? Dr. Zhao's talk will analyze this development in light of the recent rise of Chinese nationalism.

A recipient of the 1999-2000 Campbell National Fellowship at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Dr. Zhao currently sits on the board of directors of the US Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (USCSCAP). He is the founder and editor of the Journal of Contemporary China, a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research in Harvard University.

Zhao is the author and editor of six books. His most recent A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism, was published by the Stanford University Press in 2004. He has also written articles for Political Science Quarterly, The China Quarterly, World Affairs, Asian Survey, Journal of Northeast Asian Studies, Journal of Democracy, and many others.

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Suisheng Zhao Executive Director, Center for China-US Cooperation and Associate Professor, Graduate School for International Studies University of Denver, Colorado
Seminars

Mobilizing the State as Public Risk Mitigator

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Dr. Hilton Root, an academic and policy specialist in international political economy and development joined the Faculty of Pitzer, a member of Claremont Colleges, as Freeman Fellow from June 2003 to June 2005. Before joining, he served the current administration as US Executive Director Designate of the Asian Development Bank, and as senior advisor on development finance to the Department of the Treasury. Dr. Root was Director and Senior Fellow of Global Studies at the Milken Institute and was a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Initiative on Economic Growth and Democracy at the Hoover Institution. His areas of expertise are international economics, economic development and policy reform, and Asian affairs.

As a policy expert, Dr. Root advises the Asian Development Bank, the IMF, the World Bank, the UNDP, the OECD, the US State Department, the US Treasury Department and USAID. He has completed projects in 23 countries. The analytical framework he contributed to the World Bank's Asian Miracle study, 1993, was part of the effort to put institutions on the development agenda. While at the ADB as chief advisor on governance, he was the principal author of the ADB's Board-approved governance policy. He presided over a committee on governance indicators at the OECD and initiated the restructuring of the Sri Lanka civil service as an advisor to President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. He was one of the principal contributors to the design of the Millenium Challenge Account of the Bush administration.

As an academic, he has taught at the University of Michigan, California Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University. Dr. Root has written and lectured extensively, publishing six books and more than 100 articles. He is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal Asia, the International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. He has published and presented in both the English and the French languages and has been translated into many languages including Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

He has been awarded honors for The Key to the East Asian Miracle: Making Shared Growth Credible (with J. Edgardo Campos), which won the 1997 Charles H. Levine Award for best book of the year by the International Political Science Association. The Social Sciences History Association awarded him the 1995 best book prize of its Economic History Section for The Fountain of Privilege: Political Foundations of Markets in Old Regime France and England. From the American Historical Association he received the Chester Higby Prize, 1986, for the best article among those published during the previous two years. He is on the board of a number of organizations and journals including the Open Society Institute, Center for Public Integrity and Review of Pacific Basin Markets and Policies. Dr. Root received his doctorate from the University of Michigan in 1983.

Encina Basement Conference Room

Hilton Root Professor or Economics Claremont Colleges, Claremont, CA
Seminars
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