<p>China’s pursuit of carbon neutrality presents a dual challenge: sustaining investment in low-carbon infrastructure while minimizing the economic risk of asset stranding in the carbon-intensive sectors. Despite the importance of this trade-off, existing research often overlooks the economic costs, and relevant sector-specific risks associated with low-carbon-tech transition. This study addresses these gaps by integrating a bottom-up technology-rich framework (MESSAGEix model) with post-simulation analysis to evaluate how the timelines of carbon neutrality and technological progress affect capital risk in the power, steel, and cement industries in China. The results show that stranding risks are most acute in the legacy coal-fired units for the power industry, blast furnaces and coke ovens in the steel industry, and new suspension preheater kilns lacking carbon capture retrofits in the cement industry. Additionally, the results show that accelerating the timeline for carbon neutrality can reduce stranded asset risk by inducing timely clean investment, conditional on rapid technological progress. The study further identifies a discount-rate paradox and draws attention to the emerging risk of green asset stranding driven by rapid technological obsolescence. These results show the importance of sector-specific transition strategies to carbon neutrality and offer quantitative and empirical evidence to guide optimal technological investment and policy design in support of China’s climate goals.</p>