For years policymakers in China have advocated creating "Silicon Valleys" in China, but only recently has China's semiconductor industry taken off. Rather than the state leading the way, economic globalization has created the large flow of capital and knowledge to the developing world that has spurred China's technological development in recent years.

However, not all firms in China benefit equally from these inflows of financial and human capital. Presenting both industry-wide data and case studies of individual firms, Dr. Fuller will explain how the politics of finance in China shape which Chinese chip firms become fast learners able to compete in world markets and which ones remain technological laggards.

Douglas Fuller has spent over ten years researching technological development in East Asia. Most recently, he completed a doctorate at MIT in political economy. The topic of his thesis was technological development in China's IT industry. For this and previous research, he has interviewed IT firms in Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the People's Republic of China and the US. He has published articles in Industry and Innovation and other peer-reviewed journals.

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

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)