In China, things are different. There seem to have been no rich donors to bestow their names, and universities beginning with prominent city names have been used up! Thus, there is a Beijing University, a Nanjing University, a Shanghai University. But the rapid development of the country and its huge and growing population demand more and more institutions of higher learning. So, for example, we find what economists call product differentiation, variations on existing themes. Now, besides a Nanjing University, there is a Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications. (Posts refers to postal services.) There is a Nanjing Science Technology Continuing Education and there are other Nanjing institutions of higher learning.

Yesterday I discussed the New (e-) Economy with a couple of hundred students and representative faculty at the Posts and Telecommunications University referred to above. The questions raised by students showed considerable familiarity with the U.S. Had Greenspan, our Federal Reserve Chairman, done a good job in lowering interest rates? Were the economic policies of Bush and Clinton successful? Would the current economic slowdown in the U.S. become a recession? Why do Americans hate Communism? In my response to this one, I gently suggested the questioner had forgotten what Karl Marx had written in the opening lines of the famous Communist Manifesto, namely, that workers in every country should organize to violently overthrow all capitalist governments.

Unlike the questions raised last October at Hohai University, there was no mention of our inadvertent bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, nor of the collision of our spy plane and their fighter aircraft, nor of disputes concerning Taiwan, the Falun Gong sect and other controversial matters.

For my part, I concentrated especially on two themes: the potential disasters posed by accelerated automobile and fast food ingestions.

By lowering taxes and fees on auto purchases and lowering oil prices, China seems headed toward America's highway congestion, air polllution, population dispersion, gross oil importation, and the never-ending cycle of withdrawing scarce land into highway lanes to promote yet more auto congestion, pollution, etc.

On the fast-food front, the Chinese appear headed for the relatively expensive foods of KFC, Pizza Hut and McDonald's, which may lead to the same problems of obesity and cardiovascular disorders that plague Americans. It has been estimated that thirty percent of children in the U.S. are obese, along with a large number of adults.

Looking out on the young audience, I congratulated them on their slim, trim appearance and expressed the hope that they would continue to resist over-indulgence in fast-food and other less-desirable forms of Americanization.