Abstract
The green concept has become one of the key demands of the current era of development in China. As an attempt to cope with climate change and constraints of resources and environment, the industrial green transformation is bound to have a dramatic impact on the whole society. This paper enriches the understanding of industrial green transformation by highlighting its social attributes. Combining a hybrid model with a window analysis, this paper measures the dynamic efficiency of regional industrial green transformation in China from 2006 to 2015. In general, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong and Guangdong obtain the best performance; industrial water use has the lowest and most unstable efficiency among various resources. Tobit regression model, thereafter, is used to analyze the impact of hypothetical factors on the efficiency of industrial green transformation. The findings demonstrate that reduction and lean management of state-owned property, promoting the development of the productive service industry, minimizing the proportion of fossil energy use and establishing an excellent economic basis can have nationally positive impacts on the regional industrial green transformation; the progress of the productive service industry is the key to industrial green transformation in Eastern China, while the internal optimization of the industrial sector should be paid more attention in other regions, especially in Western China. Finally, detailed discussions and policy suggestions at a regional level as well as research prospects are given.
Highlights
Since the introduction of the ‘open’ policy, China has made remarkable economic progress and transformed gradually from an agricultural country to an industrial one, ranked as the second largest economy globally
The results reveal that Western China, compared to other regions with higher industrialization level, has a relatively weak industrial base which is barely strong enough to support the industrial green transformation, and its industrial development still needs to rely on pollution-intensive industry in the short term
The industrial sector is the lifeblood of the national economy, and it has laid a solid foundation for the development of other sectors
Summary
Since the introduction of the ‘open’ policy, China has made remarkable economic progress and transformed gradually from an agricultural country to an industrial one, ranked as the second largest economy globally. In part, these achievements are obviously due to long-term extensive economic growth characterized by labor-intensive and resource-intensive production modes [1,2]. The Twelfth Five-Year Plan [3] approved by the National People’s Congress in 2010 put an emphasis on green development for the first time, aiming at building a resource-conserving and environment-friendly society to realize the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry [4,5]. How to realize industrial sustainability will be a long-term and arduous task in China
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