WHAT'S NEXT: "China's Spiritual Awakening: Why a growing number of successful urban professionals are flocking to Buddhism," by Dexter Roberts, BusinessWeek, 21 January 2008, p. 050.

You hear this a lot in China from young professionals: "We're completely unschooled in religion—hence we're post-religion."

My response is always, "No, you're not post- but pre-religion. Just wait til your job doesn't do enough for you, or your kids start asking questions.

So no surprise with all this economic transformation going on: people are scrambling for conceptual and spiritual handholds. That means all religions are booming in China right now. We're watching the equivalent of the Second Great Awakening (1820s) in America: huge demand for rationalizing/orienting religiosity and people are reaching in all directions.

The fact that China's long had a number of religions in the mix really helps here. There is no one answer, so competition reigns.

That competition in America was a key enabler of our advance. It will be the same for China. It will also feed the growing environmental movement, and thank God/Anybody for that.