EAA   "Dual use" EAA controls & licenses U.S. exports & re-exports of dual-use (military & civilian) commodities & technical data for foreign policy, national security and short supply reasons. Munitions export regulated separately by State Dept under Arms Export Control Act

High Performance Computers Encryption Devices Stealth Tech & Materials Satellites Machine Tools Aerospace

E X P O R T S new EAA fast track China foreign persecution diplomacy agriculture R. Armitage C.Powell Perle payoff C. Randt Jr D.Rumsfeld Shrub HRts refs   Cong. hearings review Cox rpt 6.14.99 105th Cong. AROSE Ctr for Public Inquiry CLW FPIF NBAR UNFPA appt tracking current policy & rpts Brit. E.India Co. colonial broadside

According to Ed Timperlake & Bill Triplett, co-authors "Red Dragon Rising," "Henry Fok first made his name by running UN embargoed goods to China during Korean War. His son was later convicted for trying to bring Chinese machine guns into the U.S." Robert Kwok reportedly leads the Kwok family businesses and allegedly is involved in heroin smuggling inside Burma. In 1997, Commerce Sec. Daley met with Kwok & his son Peter. Peter Kwok is business partner of D-CA Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, Robert Blum. Peter has also worked for Li Ka-Shing & Chinese army. In 1989 he helped CITIC & Li Ka-Shing raise $120 million to buy a Hughes-built communications satellite for AsiaSat, co. part-owned by Chinese army unit COSTIND (Commission on Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense). Chinese army continued to supply al-Qaeda with arms even after the terrorist strikes.

Sells communications services and operates a fiber-optic network linking U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, S.Korea, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore corp. HQ   Hamilton, Bermuda   founded 1999 CEO John M. "Jack" Scanlan   chair Jeremiah Lambert IPO 10.6.00 $7/share   current 5¢ peak share price intra-day 1.31.01 $11.69 employees 425   incl 17 in L.A.   mkt cap $29.1 million 2002 revenue 9 mo. $89.6 million major shareholders Global Crossing Ltd. 58.9%, Microsoft Corp. 14.7%, Softbank Corp. 14.6%

Asia Global Crossing files for bankruptcy
Co. reorg plan puts major crimp in ailing GC's available cash.
11.18.02   Jas S. Granelli & Elizabeth Douglass L.A.Times

Asia Global Crossing Ltd., key asset of ailing Global Crossing Ltd., filed Chapt.11 petition itself Sunday to reorganize its debt and sell its assets to a new venture formed by a Chinese telecomm co. The long-expected petition, filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in NY, would turn over control of 24,200 miles of a sophisticated underwater high-speed, fiber-optic network to Asia Netcom, created by govt-owned China Netcom Communications Group Corp., for $120 million in cash.

Joining in Asia Netcom are venture firms Newbridge Capital & Softbank Corp.'s Softbank Asia Infrastructure Fund. Asia Netcom also would have a $150-million bank line of credit under the deal. Asia Global listed $2.6 billion in debt and $2.3 billion in assets, both as of Dec. 31.
The deal, if approved by the court, would represent the first overseas investment by a Chinese telecom firm and one of the few investments by any govt-run enterprise. Asia Global, based in Bermuda, owns or operates lines connecting 8 Asian countries & U.S..

Asia Global was operated mainly out of L.A., but since Global Crossing's bankruptcy filing in Jan., it has increasingly moved operations to Hong Kong.
With few assets left in the U.S., Asia Global doesn't expect to need any federal regulatory approval for the deal. Of Asia Global's 425 employees, 17 are based in L.A. and will stay through the transition, which the co. expects to complete by the end of March.

"We have been able to achieve our desired objective of ensuring our company's ongoing & uninterrupted operations in the future, without compromising customer service," said Asia Global CEO John M. "Jack" Scanlon. "Once approved, this transaction will mark the successful completion of the restructuring process we began in early 2002."
Sunday's filing also is expected to sever Global Crossing's 59% stake that it has maintained in Asia Global since the unit's public offering 2 years ago. That will put a major crimp in Global Crossing's available cash, which it needs to fund operations until it can emerge from bankruptcy.

Asia Global's $252 million of cash on hand amounts to about half of the parent company's total $557 million in cash at the end of Sept. Global Crossing has been running through about $60 million of its cash a month, according to operating statements it files with the Bankruptcy Court.
Also losing big chunks of Asia Global are Microsoft Corp. and the investment arm of Softbank, each of which holds a nearly 15% in the co.
Asia Global stock, traded over the counter, closed unchanged at 5¢/share Friday. It has lost 96% of its value this year.

Relations between Global Crossing & Asia Global have grown increasingly tense since late last year, when the parent co. hired the unit's chief executive and then refused to fund a promised $400 million in lines of credit for Asia Global.
Early this year, Asia Global embarked on a restructuring plan to cut costs and find new investors. It settled with 2 vendors over $266 million in overdue bills, though terms remained secret. It also raised $120 million in April by selling its share of 3 joint ventures to partner Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., giving the Hong Kong conglomerate a local phone carrier, an Asian data center and e-commerce operator ESD Services.

Hutchison, run by Hong Kong's wealthiest billionaire, Li Ka-shing, is one of 2 Asian firms awaiting federal & court approval to bring Global Crossing out of bankruptcy. Hutchison & Singapore Technologies Telemedia jointly bid $250 million for Global Crossing, whose bankruptcy filing in January was the nation's fifth largest.
In both deals, analysts say, Hutchison-STT and China Netcom are getting stellar assets for a pittance. With abundant capacity on their systems, they said, the companies can easily swap space to complete worldwide networks.

"Global Crossing spent billions to build the network, and all Hutch has to do is operate it," said analyst Jay Pultz at research firm Gartner Inc. "Basically, it's a free network for Hutchison."
In picking up Asia Global, China Netcom will get a 12,120-mile network of undersea cables that link the largest business centers in Asia. A troubled partnership, Pacific Crossing Ltd., operates 2 lines that connect Japan to the U.S. But Pacific Crossing also is in bankruptcy, and Asia Global's stake probably will be wiped out. However, both Asia Global and Global Crossing could continue to use the lines under capacity agreements with new owners.

In a statement issued late Sunday, Global Crossing said that its "customers will not experience any changes in their service." Asia Global has been focusing on selling communications & data services to customers in and around Asia. The co. said about 80% of the region's fiber-optic network traffic travels among Asian nations.

The Asia Global-China Netcom deal comes at a time when Chinese political leaders, working to stoke the country's economy, are trying to promote Chinese companies and create a degree of competition in one of the world's largest markets for telecom services.
"China is trying to develop companies within the country and [previously] hasn't shown any great inclination toward overseas investments," said industry watcher David Webb, editor of Webb-site.com, an Asian telecom site.

Asia Global operates the most modern & extensive private network in Asia. Its lines carry voice & data traffic from California to Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.
A major goal of the intra-Asia links, completed in August, is to provide more direct routes for voice & data, which in the past traveled first to the U.S. before heading back to Asia.

The operation is part of the worldwide network put together for more than $10 billion by Global Crossing under L.A. financier Gary Winnick. The highflying telecom sector in the late 1990s made top executives wealthy beyond expectations. Winnick cashed in more than $575 million worth of Global Crossing stock before the industry began sinking last year.
As network builders, Global Crossing & Asia Global began transforming themselves into telecom service providers as demand was slowing and prices were plummeting. The subsidiary never accounted for much of the total revenue of the consolidated operation, a mere 6% in Sept., but it has been a big contributor to Global Crossing's losses, making up 22% of the parent's $138-million loss in Sept.

Pultz and others believe that Asia Global is "the key strategic asset" of Global Crossing. They figure that with a worldwide glut of capacity, falling prices and a stagnant industry, Asia Global has less competition and can charge customers more.
Some, however, doubt that Asia Global has much to offer the new Global Crossing under Hutchison-STT. Companies bidding for Global Crossing last summer generally wrote off the stake in Asia Global, figuring the subsidiary would eventually go bankrupt to fix its own financial problems.

It's now cheaper to lease capacity than own & operate a long-haul carrier, experts said. "Asia completes the picture for Global Crossing, but Global doesn't need it this year or next," said analyst Brownlee Thomas at Giga Information Group Inc. in Cambridge, Mass.
Hutchinson would have been a likely suitor for Asia Global. But Hutchison's owner Li is one of China's biggest private investors and close to the country's governing elite. Experts figure it was unlikely he would bid against a co. controlled by the Chinese govt.
"He's already cut his deal with the Chinese govt," Thomas said. "Nobody's walking away from money. If the key to Asia is China, Li's trading for access to other opportunities."

More important, she noted, Global Crossing's main revenue stems from its North America & Europe lines, not the new Asia lines.
"I would have said Asia Global is a key element, but given the economic situation, with the recovery considerably slower than expected and war with Iraq making progress even slower, the business for Global Crossing is N.America & Europe," she said.

But it's unclear what the effect will be on the industry from a price hike imposed by the Chinese govt last week. Ignoring the world's telecom problems, China staggered the industry by raising the price for access to China's telephone customers from 2¢ a minute to 17¢ a minute.
Webb, for one, doesn't believe that China can maintain such a huge increase.
In May, the Chinese govt split up the monopoly held by China Telecom Corp., the national phone co. It created China Netcom to cover 10 provinces and gave China Telecom the remaining 20 provinces.

Bush asks Congress to extend China trade status ¹ 6.2.01   AP WASHINGTON   President GWBush asked Congress to extend for a year China's normal trade relations with the U.S. because they are beneficial to the American economy and imperative to promoting an "economically open, politically stable and secure China." In a letter to House & Senate leaders, Bush formally requested on Friday extension of the trade status that China and "virtually every other country in the world" now enjoys. Bush outlined his argument that U.S.-China trade benefits both American farmers, who last year exported more than $3 billion in goods to China & Hong Kong, and American business, which last year increased overall exports to China by 24%. "Trade is in the interests of American consumers, especially those who live from paycheck to paycheck and depend on inexpensive goods from China to enhance their quality of life," Bush said in a statement. "Fair trade is essential not only to improving living standards for Americans but also for a strong and productive relationship with China." After a major fight last year, Congress passed legislation granting China permanent normal trade relations with the U.S., which set tariffs on Chinese products at the same low levels as virtually every other U.S. trading partner's. The action scrapped annual reviews of China's trade benefits that Congress had conducted for 20 years. Export Controls and Policy 2.2.00   UnderSec. Wm A. Reinsch BXA annual update West 2000 Conf. La Jolla, CA   … A key & growing reality in all these cases is the capacity of our adversaries to make these products themselves or to obtain them from those who lie outside the circle of multilateral control regimes. In the case of computers, for example, China, as well as India and others, have the capacity to make these machines themselves. While they do not -- and cannot -- manufacture to compete with U.S. companies, they can make machines that will function at performance levels sufficiently high to provide the military capabilities they seek. Denying them U.S. products simply encourages their own development and production -- which was precisely the effect of the Reagan Administration's decision to deny India HPCs. Moreover, our lead in many of these sectors is not based on our monopoly of the technology; rather it is based on the quality and efficiency of our production. Close a market and we will create viable competition where there is very little now. And that competition, as we have learned in so many other sectors over the past thirty years, will not stop with China or India but will move on to compete head to head against us elsewhere to the long term detriment of our global leadership. In other words, the biggest loser in the face of closed markets is not the Chinese but the Pentagon, whose access to cutting edge goods and technologies will be slowed, and the U.S., whose technological leadership will face new challenges from new suppliers. ACCOMPLISHMENTS In this context, our goals for reform have focused squarely on streamlining and liberalization as the requisite means to deal with the global changes I have outlined. The good news is that many of these goals have been met. The bad news is that there are attempts to roll back those hard-fought changes and return us to a Cold War mentality that will not only hurt us economically but will ultimately harm our security as well. Despite these pressures, we are not standing still, and I would like to take a few moments to comment selectively on some recent events. …

U.S. tech firms gain solace from robust China sales 7.10.01   Reuters SINGAPORE   For U.S. technology giants grappling with an economic crunch and anaemic demand at home, robust sales growth in Asia-Pacific markets, particularly China, offers a gleam of hope. Software giant Oracle, network testing equipment maker Agilent Technologies and Cisco Systems, the world's largest maker of data networking gear, have trumpeted the enormous growth potential of China's market. The world's fastest expanding economy, China has provided some solace for tech heavyweights stung by shrinking orders in the U.S.. "Oracle's sales in China have been growing at an average of 50 percent year-on-year over the past few years," Pak-Wah Pong, regional managing director for Oracle Greater China, told Reuters in an interview. "China now accounts for over 50 percent of revenues from the Greater China region." Oracle's Greater China region comprises the Hong Kong, Taiwan and China markets. "My estimate is that our China sales will grow over 70 percent in the next two years and China will contribute 70 percent of our revenues from the Greater China region," he said. Pong said the China market accounted for "a big portion" of Oracle's Asia-Pacific revenues but declined to provide details. For Oracle's fiscal year to May 31, the region's revenues accounted for nearly 14 percent of global sales, up from about 12 percent a year ago. software demand Dorothy Yang, China research manager at consultancy IDC Asia Pacific, said the country was one of the fastest growing markets in Asia for Oracle, given its projected gross domestic product growth of 7.0 to 7.5% in 2001 & 8% in 2002. "China is at a very early stage of software adoption," Yang said. "The China software market is valued at about US$1.2 billion currently, with 40% year-on-year growth in 2000 and compounded annual growth of 38% over the next 5 years." Pong said China's state-owned enterprises need information technology solutions as they privatise. IT solutions are industry shorthand for almost any package of software a company may offer, for instance, programmes to help people buy and sell raw or finished materials, then help track their movement to market or factory, as well as applications in communications and banking. "The economy in China is also doing well and that has triggered a lot of (software) purchases," Pong said. "For example, we have one government ministry buying a database for 10,000 to 20,000 users from us, you cannot find this number of users in Hong Kong or Singapore." fastest growth The China market, which accounts for more than five percent of Cisco's global sales, is also its fastest-growing market in the region, Gordon Astles, president of Cisco's Asia-Pacific operations, told Reuters in an interview. The Internet communications gear maker expects to earn revenues of about US$1 billion in the current financial year from China, he said. "We have seen tremendous results in China...as the government is committed to making the Internet an effective tool," Astles said, adding that Cisco's Asia-Pacific revenues would continue to grow at a rapid clip. Hewlett-Packard spin-off Agilent is also singing the same tune about China and the rest of Asia. China is Agilent's largest market in Asia, contributing about 50% of its regional sales, Ian Johnston, director of technology for Agilent's Asia communications solutions group, told Reuters. "We see at least 35% growth in our communications revenues in Asia over the next few years," Johnston said. The stronger growth would come mainly from the north Asian economies, particularly China, which is benefiting from a huge inflow of investment funds, he said.

With Internet usage and cellular penetration rates in China projected to soar in the next few years, companies like Cisco and Agilent are well-poised to ride that growth, said IDC Asia Pacific telecoms research manager Gary Hong. Hong estimates that China will have more than 300 million cellular users by 2005 compared with about 85 million in 2000, while Internet dial-up and broadband users are set to hit 9.9 million in 2001, up from about 5.5 million in 2000. "We expect Internet penetration rates to reach 2.5% in 2004, up from 0.5% in 2000, as growth in Internet usage and e-commerce picks up, and as more people use wireless devices and conduct online transactions," Hong said.

China's next challenge: mastering the microchip   Seeking to enter the top tier of industrial powers, the country is on a crash pgm to compete in semiconductor work   10.22.02   Evelyn Iritani L.A. Times

… The semiconductor is one of the sophisticated, high-value products that form the cornerstone of an advanced economy. Chinese officials believe that mastery of the 250-step production process for the chips will teach factory managers and engineers the skills needed to lift China into the top tier of industrial powers.
With single-minded determination once focused on ideological crusades, govt has embarked on a crash program to develop a world-class semiconductor industry, using tax breaks, free land and other incentives to attract foreign companies and know-how.

Though primitive by the standards of the U.S., Japan or Taiwan, Chinese chip making has taken a big step in the last few years. A recent report by the U.S. GAO said several of China's factories, using foreign capital & technology, are one "generation" or less behind the world's leading semiconductor makers. Chip technology undergoes a significant advance, entering a new generation, every 2 years.
Chinese leaders are counting on foreign technology experts such as Chang to help them make the next leap.
Under tight security in a cavernous building in Shanghai's Pudong district, employees of Chang's Semiconductor Manufacturing Intl Corp. work in sterile "clean rooms," producing silicon chips with circuits as narrow as 0.18 micron, barely one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair.

The factory, among the most advanced in China, makes semiconductors for companies in Japan, the U.S. and Europe. The chips are packaged and sold under those firms' brand names and delivered to customers in China, which put them in a variety of electronic products.
"Because of our proximity, it is easy for us to penetrate the China market," said Chang, a 53-year-old engineer who is co. president & chief executive. "We are not the price leader, but we offer better services in China. And performance-wise, we are first-rate."

China produced $900 million worth of semiconductors in 2000, compared with $11 billion for Taiwan. But it is not only in volume that China lags behind the industry leaders. Sophisticated factories such as Chang's are rare.
Nearly all the chips made here are of the rudimentary kind used in microwave ovens and televisions, "trailing-edge" technology, as it is known in the industry. China does not make enough even of these comparatively primitive chips to meet the demands of its factories, whose consumption of semiconductors is growing 30% a year. The country imports 85% of its chips.

"Semiconductors are the key to the information technology industry," said Yu Zhongyu, president of the China Semiconductor Industry Assn. "If we want to develop further, we need to have this skill." Just a few years ago, China's prospects in this high-tech realm seemed poor.
U.S. restricted Chinese access to the most advanced American semiconductor technology out of concern that it might be put to military use. Air & water pollution made it hard to create the sterile environment needed for chip manufacturing. Skilled technicians & managers were in short supply, a legacy of the late-1960s Cultural Revolution and its purges of intellectuals.

China also lacked the necessary investment capital. Building a semiconductor factory, or "fab," involves huge start- up costs, more than $1 billion in equipment alone. To develop a globally competitive industry, China needed foreign capital & talent.
In 1995, the govt set out to get both with Project 909, 5 year plan with ambitious goals for building chip plants and developing technical expertise. China lowered barriers to foreign investment and set up high-tech zones offering free land and tax holidays. To encourage Chinese factories to use chips made in China, the govt imposed a 17% tax on imported semiconductors and charged just 3% for those produced domestically.

Chip makers from Japan and later Taiwan began setting up production facilities in China. Initially, they had to export most of their output, so home-grown enterprises would be protected from competition. But the govt gradually permitted foreign-invested factories to sell more of their semiconductors in China. That attracted more foreign firms.
Today, Motorola Inc. operates a giant semiconductor plant and a test & assembly facility in Tianjin, port city southeast of Beijing. Even as it slashes jobs in other countries, Motorola has announced plans to spend $6.6 billion over the next 5 years in China, building at least 10 more semiconductor wafer fabrication plants. "Everybody is making a bold dash into China," said Fairchild Semiconductor Intl Inc. pres. Kirk Pond. The American firm is building a $200-million facility near Shanghai to assemble & test chips for sale in China.

Taiwanese leaders feel particularly threatened by all this. They fear that the loss of chip-making jobs will hollow out the island nation's economy and give China leverage in their long-running political struggle. For years, Taiwan barred its semiconductor makers from doing business on the mainland, though companies found ways around the rules.
But this year, after lobbying by Taiwanese companies, the govt eased those restrictions, permitting the transfer of all but the most sophisticated technology.

Microsemi Corp. of Irvine, a leading supplier of chips to the U.S. military & space programs, is among the American companies making their way to China. Eager to expand its commercial & industrial business, the firm has opened a factory in Shanghai, its first outside the U.S..
The factory, a joint venture with a Chinese co., makes a specialized line of chips used in power plants and other industrial applications. Raw materials are cheap, and engineers with advanced degrees and 5 years of experience can be hired for less than $500 a month, said Microsemi's intl operations vp Andy Yuen. The factory produces high- quality chips at one-third the cost of a similar product in the U.S..

"We chose Shanghai as a center because everything we need is within 20 miles of our factory," said Yuen, a Hong Kong native who oversees the firm's operations in Asia and Europe. "Raw materials, chemicals, tooling, you name it, they're here. Instead of just having low-end assembly workers, we can use Shanghai as a place for brainpower. My goal is to do 100% here, no exceptions."
Foreign technocrats such as Yuen & Chang provide China with something money can't buy: extensive experience in the intensely competitive semiconductor industry.

Chang was born in Nanjing, China, and raised in Kaoshiung, Taiwan, where his parents moved before his first birthday. They were among the thousands of Chinese who fled after the Communists wrested control of the mainland in 1949. After graduating from National Taiwan University and completing his military service, Chang went to the U.S., where he got a master's degree in engineering science at the State Univ. of NY in Buffalo. He & his wife, also an engineer, went to work at Texas Instruments Inc. in Dallas.
Over the next 2 decades, Chang played a key role in the co. global expansion, helping oversee the launch of 6 semiconductor factories in Asia & Europe.

After taking early retirement from Texas Instruments in 1997, he decided to return to Taiwan. Backed by a group of intl investors, Chang founded Worldwide Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., which made custom chips for the world's leading technology firms.
In 2000, Worldwide merged with a Taiwanese chip maker, and some of Chang's customers and investors urged him to start another factory. With $1.6 billion in funding from firms such as Goldman Sachs and H&Q Asia Pacific, a Palo Alto investment group, Chang went shopping for a location. Officials in Shanghai offered him the most attractive tax breaks, along with cheap land, water and electricity and a large supply of technical talent.

But for Chang, the critical factor was spiritual. A missionary trapped in an engineer's body, he saw his company as a way to strengthen Christianity in the world's most populous nation. "China is a good place in many aspects. The market is huge. Manufacturing costs are competitive. The pool of talent is also very good," he said. "But frankly, I was thinking about how I could share God's love with the Chinese more than how I could help the economy."
Chang traveled the globe assembling a team of chip designers, engineers and production experts, many from the Chinese Christian community. He offered the classic tech-company bargain: a chance to be on the ground floor of a pioneering venture, with stock options.

To ease employees' culture shock, he is building a housing development near the Pudong factory, with a bilingual school. Roger Lee, 43, gave up a good job at Micron Technology Inc. of Boise, Idaho, one of the world's largest memory chip companies, to join Chang's start-up as a vice president. Lee also took a substantial pay cut. Chang pays his employees at prevailing Chinese rates, which for top executives are 25% to 30% of U.S. salaries.
Lee worried about tearing his wife and 3 sons, ages 7 to 15, away from their 5 acre spread in Boise and the friends & family they had known all their lives. But Lee, who was born in China and educated in the U.S., shared Chang's conviction that their native country was poised to become a world center for chip manufacturing.

At Micron, where Lee worked for 15 years, the Princeton graduate played a critical role in developing products and had 115 patents to his name. He hopes to replicate that record at Chang's company, where he is head of memory technology development.
"When I joined Micron, it was a start-up company," Lee said. "When I left, there were 12,000 employees. It is hard for one person to make a difference."
Shou Gouping, a 40-year-old engineer for Chang's company, left Beijing for the U.S. 2 years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and did not expect to see his homeland again. After obtaining advanced degrees in electrical engineering, Shou worked for technology firms in Silicon Valley. He met Hai Ling, a Chinese immigrant who had come to the U.S. to study physics. They were married in 1998 and had a son the next year.

Early last year, Shou's aging mother grew sick, and the couple returned to China with their son. After a decade in the U.S., Shou said, it felt good to be surrounded by family and the culture & language of his childhood. Though people were poor by U.S. standards, he sensed an optimism about China's future.
3 weeks later, Shou & his wife reluctantly returned to Sunnyvale, CA. But they left their son with Shou's mother and decided to look for a way back to China. Through a friend in Florida, Shou heard that Chang was hiring. He took a job as a technical manager in the firm's design service dept, providing computer support.

Shou, a Christian, said that Chang's spiritual message resonated deeply with him. "I had a feeling that my life should be in China, serving people & God," he said. Chang and his employees have had their share of frustrations, including tussles with local officials over taxes, delays in getting sophisticated U.S. equipt because of export controls, and a shortage of experienced personnel.
But analysts say co. prospects are bright. Chang has cut deals with industry giants such as Toshiba Corp., Fujitsu Ltd. and Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. to obtain leading-edge technology. In return, Chang gave them an ownership stake in his firm or agreed to produce chips for them.

Chang's co. "is successful because it has outside connections," said Dorothy Lai, a Hong Kong analyst with Gartner Dataquest, a technology research firm based in Stamford, CT. 7 months ago, Chang began holding religious services in a rented building near his factory. He hopes to start construction soon on a church for his employees.
"Every time we have done something successful, I openly mention that this is done with the Lord's blessing," he said. "At first, some people felt awkward about this. But as they realize we really practice our beliefs, they accept us."

White House wants to open up roads for long haul
10.20.02   Joe Cantlupe Copley News Service

Transportation officials contend the "grace period" will not undermine safety on U.S. highways, noting that most Mexican trucks are made by U.S. companies and that a tough inspection program is being developed. However, some highway safety, insurance and trucking groups say the plan clashes with the 1986 Motor Vehicle Safety Act, which states commercial vehicles, incl foreign ones, must be certified to comply with U.S. manufacturing standards at the time they were built.
That would include any commercial vehicle from Canada or Mexico that crosses the border, regardless of where they were manufactured, transportation officials say. The manufacturing certifications are needed to ensure that Mexican vehicles are equipped with such safeguards as automatic brake adjusters & trailer guards. Mexico requires no specific standards for equipt on commercial vehicles.

The administration's proposal would allow foreign vehicles to use "equipt that not only will not, but sometimes could not, be brought into compliance" with U.S. standards, said Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety atty Henry M. Jasny. "The removal of barriers to trade was not intended to require the evasion or suspension of established motor vehicle regulations & safety standards," he said.
Federal authorities acknowledge that they alerted Mexican authorities about the certification regulations in 1995. David Longo of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said officials are taking steps to ensure that safety on U.S. highways is maintained, regardless of the 2 year waiver proposal.

Among other things, the U.S. would require inspections of each Mexican vehicle at least every 90 days, a cycle that has been carried out for years at California's state-run facilities, Longo said. U.S. officials also are negotiating with Mexican authorities to allow inspectors to examine the records of Mexican trucking companies. About 75 Mexican trucking companies submitted applications to travel beyond the border areas, officials said. Mexican companies that previously have operated trucks within the border areas will be eligible for the 2 year waivers, according to the Transportation Dept. These companies are most likely to own commercial vehicles slated to be driven elsewhere in the U.S., experts said.

"We're not going to see a horde of trucks going across the border when this is approved," one administration official said. President Bush has pushed for Mexican access to all of this country's highways since shortly after taking office, saying it was necessary to comply with the North American Free Trade Agreement. The former Texas governor overturned a Clinton administration order in 1995 that continued a ban on Mexican long-haul cargo trucks. The ban has been in effect since the 1980s.
Earlier this year, the White House hoped to get the Mexican trucks moving across this country during the summer, but the plan was sidetracked in the face of congressional resistance generated by concern about the safety of Mexican trucks.

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