Hosted by the Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) as part of their Greater China Forum which meets first Tuesday of each month.

Joseph Y. Liu

President, CEO, and member, Board of Directors, Oplink Communications, Inc.

Oplink designs, manufactures, and markets fiber optic products and services that increase the performance of optical networks, including its photonic foundry with manufacturing activities in Zhuhai and design and engineering in San Jose.

Sam T. Wang, Ph.D.

President, SMIC Americas, the US operations of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC)

With an IPO in March 2004 (and current market cap of $3.6 billion), SMIC is China's most advanced pure play IC foundry company, with wafer fabs located in Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin, including its Fab 1 named "Top Fab of the Year for 2003" by Semiconductor International.

Tien Wu, Ph.D.

President, ASE Americas, Europe and Japan, Board of Directors and Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Marketing and Strategy, ASE Inc., and Chief Executive Officer, ISE Labs Inc (An ASE Test Company)

The ASE Group is the world's largest provider of independent semiconductor manufacturing services in assembly and test with $2.9 billion sales revenue in 2003, 29,000 employees worldwide, and facilities across Asia, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Professor James Fearon will present this paper as part of an ongoing research project into the relationship between civil wars and economic development.

U.S. President George W. Bush came to power emphasizing that he did not regard nation-building as an appropriate activity for the U.S. military. As he prepares to run for re-election, the United States is engaged in two of the most ambitious nation-building projects in its history in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. undertook a lead role in part because of the circumstances in which the two conflicts commenced, but also as an extension of the present administration's more general opposition to multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. Though the United States determined that it did not need the UN going into Iraq, however, it appears that it has belatedly realized it might need the UN in order to get out.

Simon Chesterman is Executive Director of the Institute for International Law and Justice at New York University School of Law. Prior to joining NYU, he was a Senior Associate at the International Peace Academy and Director of UN Relations at the International Crisis Group in New York. He had previously worked for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Belgrade and at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha.

He is the author of You, The People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration, and State-Building (Oxford University Press, 2004) and Just War or Just Peace? Humanitarian Intervention and International Law (Oxford University Press, 2001), which was awarded the American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit. He is the editor, with Michael Ignatieff and Ramesh Thakur, of Making States Work: State Failure and the Crisis of Governance (United Nations University Press, forthcoming) and of Civilians in War (Lynne Rienner, 2001). He regularly contributes to international law and political science journals, as well as mass media publications such as the International Herald Tribune. His has taught at the Universities of Melbourne, Oxford, Southampton, and Columbia.

Taiwan is a world premier manufacturing center, with many products leading in world market share, such as IC foundry (72.8%), Mask ROM (81.8%), WLAN (91%), CD-R Disc (79%), DVD-R Disc (82%) and others. In recent years, it has also performed well in patent productivity and S&T infrastructure. Currently, the challenge for Taiwan is to enter a new stage for economic development - to transform from a manufacturing-based economy in an innovation-based economy. What is the current status and prospects of Taiwan's industry technology innovation system? How does it perform? What are the gaps? What lessons have been learned from Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs policies for public and private, university and industry networking?

As director general of the Department of Industrial Technology (DOIT) at the Ministry of Economic Affairs in Taiwan, Dr. Hwang is responsible for formulating industrial policy to upgrade technology levels in Taiwan. The DOIT works with research institutions, private companies and universities to implement Taiwan's annual Technology Development Program. Supported by a more than $5 billion annual budget, this program focuses on stimulating the development and transfer of knowledge-intensive technologies, upgrading R&D capabilities of research institutions, and promoting international scientific and technological cooperation across such key industries, as IT, biotech, materials, machinery, aerospace, communications and others. Since 1990, Dr. Hwang has led a distinguished career in government service in Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs. He received a PhD in Information Engineering and MS in Computer Engineering from National Chiao-Tung University and a BS in Electronics Engineering from Chung Yuan Christian University.