Silicon Valley model attracts Asia's developing nations
By Michael White
SAN FRANCISCO (AP): As Asia's developing nations emerge from the region's financial crisis, business leaders are looking toward Silicon Valley for new business models to transform economies based on cheap labor and mass production.
Their challenges, they acknowledge, include convincing governments that the Internet revolution doesn't mean social and political revolution as well.
"If we want to get into the world of globalization, we've got to get onto the Internet train and get into e-space," Roberto Romulo, the immediate past chairman of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council and chairman of Equitable Card Group, a Philippines-based credit card company.
Romulo's remarks were aimed at about 300 business, government and academic leaders who gathered for the council's annual information technology summit last week.
To bring their countries into the information age, they must show political leaders in less-developed countries that electronic commerce and other Internet technologies can help solve social and economic problems, he said.
"Those leaders aren't really interested in what's good for businessmen," Romulo said. "They're interested in what we can do to decrease hunger and poverty."
The council, whose members come from 24 Pacific Rim nations, is pursing a range of initiatives aimed at convincing government leaders that moving into the information age is not optional.
In meetings scheduled over the next year, leaders of the cooperation council and its sister group, the Asian Pacific Economic Council, will push government leaders to increase investment in new technologies. Meanwhile, the smaller Association of Southeast Asian Nations is developing a Web site aimed at fostering electronic commerce, tourism and online learning for its 10 member nations.
Their goal is to convince developing countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines that advanced technology can boost exports by using Web sites to connect sellers with overseas customers.
In their campaign, technology proponents are getting strong encouragement from U.S. technology companies that stand to benefit from the process by selling the software, servers, switches and providing cable and satellite access that would be the backbone of Asia's transformation.
In a series of presentations during the summit, executives from IBM Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., Oracle Corp., and other U.S. companies warned businessmen and bureaucrats that countries that don't join the revolution risk being left behind.
"Asian governments have little choice but to embrace the Internet economy," said Derek Williams, a senior vice president in Oracle Corp.'s Asia Pacific division.
"In the Internet age, the best security a country can have to ensure its success is intellectual capital. This becomes the most important national asset."
That means infusing educational systems with access to the Internet and related technologies that will enable Asian universities to produce high-tech entrepreneurs like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Yahoo! Inc. co-founder Jerry Yang.
"Success in high-tech depends on creating technology, not on copying," said Korean-born Chong-moon Lee, founder of Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc., a supplier of graphics, video accelerator and sound cards.
For conservative governments that means coming to terms with technologies such as encryption software that allows private communication necessary for electronic commerce.
"With the Internet revolution any country has two options: either you embrace it or you resist," said Lim Swee Say, minister of communications and information technology for technologically advanced Singapore.
Singapore blocks access to some Web sites that contain pornography as a gesture of its disapproval, Lim said. But the government knows it can't completely control the medium, he said.
"If you resist the Internet you will be left out of the global economy. Obviously, that is not a viable option. The only option is to embrace the Internet revolution," he said.