Doing nothing is not an option.

That was the last line of our February editorial about the vision of St. Louis civic leaders who want to make Lambert-St. Louis International Airport a hub for cargo from China and other countries.

It’s a philosophy that gets to the heart of the region’s future.

The St. Louis region is scrambling to remake its economy, to find firm footing in the global marketplace. We don’t manufacture as many things as we used to, not shoes or clothes or cars or warplanes. We’ve put a focus on education and health care and grabbed a foothold in the biosciences. But what’s next?

We’re in transition, and transitions are difficult. Schools struggle to meet reasonable standards. City budgets fall short because of the lack of growth, leaving roads to crumble and firefighters and police officers to grumble.

The poor go without services. Those with mental health problems are left to the streets. Nearly 25 percent of the children living in poverty in Missouri are in St. Louis city or St. Louis County.

There are no easy answers, and this is not just a local problem.

Over the past several years, key business and political leaders have developed a vision that holds promise: St. Louis should return to its past as a transportation and distribution hub, beginning with China.

Clayton attorney Steve Stone, a key player in the so-called China Hub negotiations, says the Chinese refer to St. Louis as the “center of the center.” The region’s geography gives St. Louis a natural advantage as a place that can move goods and services all across the country and the world, through the air, on highways, over train tracks and down rivers.

That geography — and the capacity to grow at Lambert — are the advantages behind the China Hub concept. The city is negotiating with China Cargo Airlines to bring Chinese-made goods to America through Lambert and to take American goods and agricultural products back overseas.

The negotiations have been difficult and intense. They have reached a critical and difficult point: The Chinese want to see the color of our money.

A China Hub needs a critical mass of warehousing, distribution, manufacturing and assembly facilities. The Missouri Senate soon will take up Senate Bill 390, sponsored by Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Glendale. It would offer tax credits to companies that decide where freight moves and to assembly and warehousing facilities that would locate here if St. Louis becomes a hub of such commerce.

The proposal isn’t cheap — $480 million over 15 years. But no one would get any tax credits without first building a facility.

An executive of China Cargo Airlines wrote in a letter to the city that without the incentives, opening new air routes to Lambert will be “very difficult, or even inconceivable.”

So-called “freight-forwarding” companies need a reason other than geography to take a chance on St. Louis. Tax incentives, combined with Chinese support, would provide that reason. The bill would create a 50-mile gateway zone in which tax incentives could be used. This might involve redeveloping vacant auto manufacturing sites in Fenton and Hazelwood into distribution centers.

This bill could provide an answer to question of “what’s next” for the St. Louis economy.

More than 40 percent of the state’s income is produced in the St. Louis region. As goes St. Louis, so goes the rest of the state.

Still, approving $30 million a year in new tax credits when the state is suffering economically is a tough sell. In the Legislature’s current political environment, it’s an impossible task without also making changes to the state’s massive web of business tax incentives.

Missouri can’t afford $30 million more in business incentives if they come at the expense of social programs and education spending that already have been cut to the bone.

For the China Hub concept to truly make sense, the business community and lawmakers must bring the same urgency to these programs that they bring to economic development incentives. They know Missouri’s tax structure needs an overhaul. They know its social safety net is in tatters.

If doing nothing is not an option, then that philosophy also must apply to public education, higher education, children’s programs, health care spending and mental health.

If the goal is a more prosperous and economically stable region, there must be an urgency to help make the entire community a better place for families as well as for businesses.

The “center of the center” needs not just new businesses, but also employees who will put down roots to make this place as strong as it was at the turn of the 20th century.

Lawmakers can help by passing Mr. Schmitt’s bill. But they can’t stop there.

They should pay for the new incentives not by taking more from education, or social programs, or road funds or public employees, but by setting priorities on which incentives will be key to the state’s future. Pass a bill remaking the state’s various business incentives that cuts at least $60 million a year in other tax credits, twice as much as is needed to fund the China Hub incentives.

Or business leaders can help lawmakers find additional revenue. Collecting $20 million in Internet sales taxes that already are owed would be the first place to look. The lowest-in-the-nation cigarette and beer taxes are another. The deductibility of federal income taxes from state income taxes is another. Restoring progressiveness to the all-but-flat state income tax is another.

And put at least $30 million toward educating our future work force. Put the money in public schools. Add it to college scholarship programs. Make a commitment that for every dollar spent on corporate welfare, an equal amount will be spent making sure that Missouri children can go to school and fulfill the economic promise that is being offered by business leaders dreaming about our future.

Remember: Doing nothing is not an option.