在 1997 年香港回归后由中国政府任命的第一任特首董建华先生几天前用三句话向我总结了中国近 /现代经济发展史： “中国在世界工业革命时代沉睡。她在世界信息技术革命时代开始醒来。 她将全力投入绿色革命时代。”

    坦率地说， 此时此刻身在中国的我比以往任何时候都相信当历史学家总结回顾二十一世纪第一个十年的时候，他们会认为这个时期发生的最重大的事件不是全球经济衰退，而是中国的绿色跃进式发展。北京的领导层明白能源技术（ ET ）革命，既是一种必要，也是一个机会，他们不打算错过。

    相比之下，我们国家想要做的是如何在阿富汗问题上玩得漂亮。 祝你们玩得愉快。

当然，这话听起来有些损人。 但下面这句话就有分量了： 英特尔公司的共同创始人之一安迪? 格鲁夫常说公司发展到了“战略转折点”。这是指当公司业务基础发生变化，导致业务下降的时候，公司要么做出困难的决定，在业务下降期增大投入，让公司业务发展重新回到良性发展轨道，要么什么都不做，任由业务继续萎缩。同样的道理也适用于各国经济发展。

    美国现在就处在一个战略转折点。 美国政府要么给碳产品定价，并制定正确的法律引导措施，确保美国成为中国在能源技术革命中主要的竞争者 / 合作伙伴，要么无所作为，逐渐将该产业拱手相让给北京，当然随之而去的是该产业带来的就业机会和能源安全。

    为了能顺利通过中期选举，避免共和党议员“变相增加新税种”的指责，巴拉克 ? 奥巴马总统会不会只完成他的医保法案过关，而把议会已经通过的能源立法和碳交易定价等法案搁置一边呢？ 或者他会不会抓住11 月份中期选取之前有可能是他的最后一个时机，利用民主党在参议院占有大多数席位和部分共和党人的支持，来通过碳排有偿交易的法案，从而奠定美国在清洁能源创新和能源安全方面的主导地位呢？

    而中国仅仅在去年一年内所涌现出的风能、太阳能、公共交通、核能和煤炭高效燃烧项目数量之多就足以让我感到震惊。

    比尔? 葛罗斯在 加利福尼亚州经营着e 太阳能公司。这是一家新公司，从事太阳能光热发电业务，前景看好。以下是他发给我的电子邮件： 葛罗斯说星期六他在北京宣布了“至今最大的太阳能光热项目。 利用我们在加利福尼亚的技术，在中国投资建设发电厂项目。项目总投资将为 50亿美元，规模为2 千兆瓦。 在这方面，中国政府比美国政府还要积极进取。我们也向美国能源部申请贷款，用于在新墨西哥州建设 92 兆瓦的发电项目。而中国政府，仅用了比美国能源部对我们申请第一阶段审核周期还短的时间，就签署、批准了一个规模大过其二十多倍的项目，并做到年内即可开工建设。”

    的确，在北京的中国领导层重视气候变化问题。但 眼前，中国领导人更知道中国正处于人类历史上最大规模的从农村向城市移民的发展进程之中。这将造成能源需求的激增。中国决心通过开发本国清洁能源来满足这一增长的能源需求，从而确保中国未来的经济不会受制于国际能源市场供应的动荡，也不会因使用传统能源造成的污染而达到窒息的地步。

    纽约时报香港记者站站长基思 ? 布莱德舍表示单单在去年一年内，中国涌现了大量的太阳能电池板制造厂家。太阳能电力的价格已经从每度电 0.59美元降到每度电0.16美元。   同时，中国上周也试验了世界上最快的子弹头高速列车，从武汉到广州，每小时达到 350公里。 布莱德舍强调中国“几乎已经完成从北京到上海高速铁路线的建设，工程造价为 235亿美元”。 从北京到上海共有1100 公里，目前的火车运行需要十二个小时，今后的高速列车运行只需要五个小时。相比之下，美国全国铁路客运公司（美铁）的火车从纽约开往芝加哥要运行同样的距离，需要十八个小时。

    中国目前在快速扩张核能发电的规模上，也走在世界前列。 预计在2020 年以前，中国将新建50 多个核能发电反应堆。而同期全世界其它国家和地区加在一起所新建的可能只有 15个核能发电反应堆。

香港最大的电力供应企业中电集团（ CLP）的首席执行官包立贤（ Andrew Brandler ）表示：“到二十一世纪第一个十年结束的时候，中国将在全球所有类型发电设备的生产制造上占有绝对统治地位。”

    在此期间， 中国将会使得清洁能源技术运用变得更便宜，让中国人民和世界人民用得起。但是即便是中国专家都认为如果中国和西方国家共同合作，这场绿色革命将会来得更快、更有效。这种合作的模式是西方国家专注于中国尚为薄弱的能源研究和技术创新，并且对新型清洁技术进行风险资本投入和培育，中国则专注于批量生产和大规模推广。

    这是一个战略转折点。 很显然，如果我们美国的确重视我们的能源安全、经济实力和环境质量的话，我们必须要制定一个长期的碳排放价格，从而刺激和奖励清洁能源创新。当一个充满活力的中国完全清醒的时候，我们承担不起昏睡的历史责任。

C. H. Tung, the first Chinese-appointed chief executive of Hong Kong after the handover in 1997, offered me a three-sentence summary the other day of China’s modern economic history: “China was asleep during the Industrial Revolution. She was just waking during the Information Technology Revolution. She intends to participate fully in the Green Revolution.”

I’ll say. Being in China right now I am more convinced than ever that when historians look back at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, they will say that the most important thing to happen was not the Great Recession, but China’s Green Leap Forward. The Beijing leadership clearly understands that the E.T. — Energy Technology — revolution is both a necessity and an opportunity, and they do not intend to miss it.

We, by contrast, intend to fix Afghanistan. Have a nice day.

O.K., that was a cheap shot. But here’s one that isn’t: Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel, liked to say that companies come to “strategic inflection points,” where the fundamentals of a business change and they either make the hard decision to invest in a down cycle and take a more promising trajectory or do nothing and wither. The same is true for countries.

The U.S. is at just such a strategic inflection point. We are either going to put in place a price on carbon and the right regulatory incentives to ensure that America is China’s main competitor/partner in the E.T. revolution, or we are going to gradually cede this industry to Beijing and the good jobs and energy security that would go with it.

Is President Obama going to finish health care and then put aside the pending energy legislation — and carbon pricing — that Congress has already passed in order to get through the midterms without Republicans screaming “new taxes?” Or is he going to seize this moment before the midterms — possibly his last window to put together a majority in the Senate, including some Republicans, for a price on carbon — and put in place a real U.S. engine for clean energy innovation and energy security?

I’ve been stunned to learn about the sheer volume of wind, solar, mass transit, nuclear and more efficient coal-burning projects that have sprouted in China in just the last year.

Here’s e-mail from Bill Gross, who runs eSolar, a promising California solar-thermal start-up: On Saturday, in Beijing, said Gross, he announced “the biggest solar-thermal deal ever. It’s a 2 gigawatt, $5 billion deal to build plants in China using our California-based technology. China is being even more aggressive than the U.S. We applied for a [U.S. Department of Energy] loan for a 92 megawatt project in New Mexico, and in less time than it took them to do stage 1 of the application review, China signs, approves, and is ready to begin construction this year on a 20 times bigger project!”

Yes, climate change is a concern for Beijing, but more immediately China’s leaders know that their country is in the midst of the biggest migration of people from the countryside to urban centers in the history of mankind. This is creating a surge in energy demand, which China is determined to meet with cleaner, homegrown sources so that its future economy will be less vulnerable to supply shocks and so it doesn’t pollute itself to death.

In the last year alone, so many new solar panel makers emerged in China that the price of solar power has fallen from roughly 59 cents a kilowatt hour to 16 cents, according to The Times’s bureau chief here, Keith Bradsher. Meanwhile, China last week tested the fastest bullet train in the world — 217 miles per hour — from Wuhan to Guangzhou. As Bradsher noted, China “has nearly finished the construction of a high-speed rail route from Beijing to Shanghai at a cost of $23.5 billion. Trains will cover the 700-mile route in just five hours, compared with 12 hours today. By comparison, Amtrak trains require at least 18 hours to travel a similar distance from New York to Chicago.”

China is also engaged in the world’s most rapid expansion of nuclear power. It is expected to build some 50 new nuclear reactors by 2020; the rest of the world combined might build 15.

“By the end of this decade, China will be dominating global production of the whole range of power equipment,” said Andrew Brandler, the C.E.O. of the CLP Group, Hong Kong’s largest power utility.

In the process, China is going to make clean power technologies cheaper for itself and everyone else. But even Chinese experts will tell you that it will all happen faster and more effectively if China and America work together — with the U.S. specializing in energy research and innovation, at which China is still weak, as well as in venture investing and servicing of new clean technologies, and with China specializing in mass production.

This is a strategic inflection point. It is clear that if we, America, care about our energy security, economic strength and environmental quality we need to put in place a long-term carbon price that stimulates and rewards clean power innovation. We can’t afford to be asleep with an invigorated China wide awake.