China going green, to invest in Cleantech, US to follow ?

"America had better wake up to this likelihood," said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at a green technology summit last month in Shanghai aimed primarily at foreign investors interested in entering China's burgeoning cleantech industry.

Nearly half a dozen such conferences have been held in Shanghai and Beijing in recent weeks.

"If China takes advantage of their opportunity to move as aggressively as we know they can move, we will be left in economic dust," Newsom continued.

"It's no longer America leading the way and China reacting. It's starting to go the other way around."

Progressive environmental policies from the Chinese government combined with an increasingly green-minded public is fueling what some are calling a clean technology renaissance around the country.

The Chinese government is spending millions of dollars on clean energy initiatives ranging from the construction of charging stations for electric vehicles in several major cities to massive wind farms in Inner Mongolia and offshore in the Pacific Ocean.

However what China does not have yet have is the technological innovation that characterizes clean energy sectors in America and Europe. While the country is one of the world's largest manufacturers of solar panels and wind turbines, many of the advances for solar and wind technologies are still largely coming from the West.