With warm-hearted and friendly promotion by our Japanese friends Prof. – sushi Ohori, Prof. Tetsuo Ida, and Prof. Zhenjiang Hu, and other distinguished professors and scholars from countries and regions such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, the 1st Asian Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems(APLAS2003)tookplacein Beijing.Wereceived76papers, among which 24 were selected for the proceedings after serious evaluation, which fully demonstrates the high quality of the collected papers. I hereby, on behalf of the Program Committee and the Organization Committee of the symposium, would like to extend the warmest welcome and hearty thanks to all colleagues who attended the symposium, all scholars who generously contributed their papers, and all those who were actively dedicated to the organization of this symposium. Over the past decade, the Asian economy has undergone rapid development. Keeping pace with this accelerated economic growth, Asia has made great he- way in software, integrated circuits, mobile communication and the Internet. All this has laid a ?rm material foundation for undertaking theoretical research on computer science and programming languages. Therefore, to meet the incr- sing demands of the IT market, great opportunities and challenges in advanced research in these ?elds. I strongly believe that in the coming future, with the persistent e?orts of our colleagues, the Asian software industry and research on computer science will be important players in the world economy, on an equal footing with their counterparts in the United States and Europe.