Thoman Friedman has been writing a lot about China's supposed push toward green technology. While I am still not sure how much sustainable technology is actually being developed in China, I think that Friedman's recent claim, that Chinese leadership in green manufacturing and technology may spur a new technological race similar to what we experienced with the USSR last century, is pretty interesting.

Here's a blurb:

I believe this Chinese decision to go green is the 21st-century equivalent of the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik — the world’s first Earth-orbiting satellite. That launch stunned us, convinced President Eisenhower that the U.S. was falling behind in missile technology and spurred America to make massive investments in science, education, infrastructure and networking — one eventual byproduct of which was the Internet.