Green Transformation In China Research Articles

Impacts of heterogeneous environmental regulation on green transformation of China's iron and steel industry: Evidence from dynamic panel threshold regression

Comprehensively observing the influencing mechanisms of heterogeneous environmental regulations on industrial green transformation will provide important implications for environmental policy-making. This study first proposes a global super adjusted epsilon-based measure with undesirable outputs to evaluate industrial green transformation performance (GTP). A dynamic panel threshold model with interaction term is then constructed to estimate the non-linear and interactive effects of heterogeneous regulations on GTP. Empirical tests based on 49 large- and medium-sized iron and steel (IS) firms during 2010–2017 demonstrate that: 1) The GTP of the IS industry experienced fluctuating enhancement during the observation period, and a cumulative cyclic effect is found for the GTP; 2) both formal and informal regulations improve industrial GTP, and formal regulation shows two thresholds while informal regulation has one threshold; 3) the interactive effect between formal and informal regulations has formed and exerted positive effects on GTP. Based on the empirical results, corresponding suggestions are posited to further facilitate the IS industry's green transformation and environmental governance.

Executive green investment vision, stakeholders’ green innovation concerns and enterprise green innovation performance

During the 14th Five Year Plan period, the green transformation of China’s economic growth mode has become the top priority under the carbon peak and carbon neutrality goal. As an important focus of green transformation and development, manufacturing enterprises need to carry out green innovation to cope with the dual pressure of resource and environmental constraints and supply side structural contradictions. Based on the perspective of business ecosystem theory, this study uses fsQCA method to analyze the A-share listed manufacturing enterprise clusters in China’s Yangtze River Delta economic belt and the middle reaches of the Yellow River economic belt. The research found that: 1) Manufacturing enterprises engaged in green innovation has the characteristics of multi causality and concurrence, and there are mainly four driving paths of high performance level. 2) The vision of management and investment is the core supporting factor of green innovation performance. The business ecosystem structure, which combines environmental supervision and competitors’ green innovation concerns, is the core driving structure of enterprise green innovation. 3) Compared with the academic experience of senior executives, the driving effect of environmental investment plays a greater role in improving the level of innovation performance. The innovation of this study is to introduce the green investment vision of managers and the green innovation concerns of stakeholders into the research framework of green innovation driving paths of manufacturing enterprises, explore different green innovation paths across case sets, and discuss the heterogeneity of the impact of each path on the level of green innovation performance, providing a practical plan of green innovation for managers of manufacturing enterprises, and help them understand which business ecosystem elements can promote efficient green innovation.

Carbon emissions trading policy and green transformation of China’s manufacturing industry: Mechanism assessment and policy implications

Accelerating the green transformation of manufacturing industry is the way to the sustainable development of China’s economy and an inevitable requirement for realizing the great vision of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. This paper employs the global Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index based on the SBM-DEA method to calculate the green total factor productivity covering manufacturing industry of 30 Chinese provinces between 2006 and 2019. A difference-in-difference model is constructed to empirically study the direct impact and mechanism assessment of carbon emission trading policy on the green total factor productivity. The results show that the green total factor productivity of China’s manufacturing industry generally showed a dynamic trend of rising during this period. Critically, the implementation of the carbon emissions trading policy has a significant effect on promoting the green total factor productivity of China’s manufacturing industry. Interestingly, this promoting effect will be enhanced by higher technical levels, a cleaner energy structure, and a greener industrial structure. Additionally, our evidence also shows that the positive impact of carbon emission trading policies on green total factor productivity will be improved by higher carbon emission trading prices and a more active carbon emission trading market, thereby accelerating the green transformation process of manufacturing industry. Therefore, taking carbon emissions trading policy as a long-term strategy and improving its effectiveness is crucial to ensuring the green and sustainable development of China’s manufacturing industry.

How does internet development promote urban green innovation efficiency? Evidence from China

In recent years, the widespread application of the internet has become an important engine driving urban innovation and green transformation in China. Based on panel data from China's 285 prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2018, this study used the super-epsilon-based measure (EBM)-undesirable model to evaluate urban green innovation efficiency (GIE). The dynamic spatial Durbin model (SDM), mediating effect model, threshold model, and difference in differences (DID) method were then used to investigate the spatial spillover effect, transmission mechanism, nonlinear relationship, and policy shock effect of internet development on urban GIE, respectively. Several key results were obtained. (1) Internet development can significantly promote urban GIE in China directly and indirectly by means of promoting producer services agglomeration, driving financial development, and reducing resource dependence. (2) There was a nonlinear relationship between internet development and urban GIE under different levels of producer services agglomeration, financial development and resource dependence. (3) Notably, when heterogeneity in geographical locations, infrastructure levels and innovation capabilities was considered, developed eastern regions and cities with better traditional infrastructure and higher innovation capacities enjoyed a more noticeable effect from internet development on GIE. (4) The “Broadband China” pilot policy evaluation, which was processed by the continuous DID method, further confirmed the promotional effect of internet development on urban GIE. These findings will help policy-makers better understand the relationship between internet development and urban GIE, thus the government should steadfastly continue to enhance information infrastructure, accelerate the deep integration of traditional industries with the internet, and formulate targeted policies under the regional differences, so as to promote urban technological innovation and green development in China.

Industrial Innovation on the Green Transformation of Manufacturing Commerce

The manufacturing industry is the foundation and pillar of the national economy. With the background of China’s economic development entering a new era and fully implementing the innovation-driven development strategy, the manufacturing sector’s level of green transformation has been realized as one of the critical indicators of China’s economic development. Technology innovation-driven green manufacturing industry transformation is a crucial strategy to achieve high-quality economic development and boost global competitiveness in the context of a new round of technological revolution and industrial reform closely entwined with China's economic transformation and development. Based on this, we take the green transformation of China’s manufacturing industry as the theme, focus on industries, regions, and strategic industries, and explore the impact and spatial linkage effect of technological innovation on the green transformation of the manufacturing industry. Based on the research perspective of manufacturing industry development heterogeneity, we construct the slack based measure - Undesirable-Malmquist-Tobit comprehensive evaluation method and put forward the driving role and impact of technological innovation on the green transformation of the manufacturing industry. The manufacturing industry is categorized into three categories based on the level of pollution, such as clean industry, medium pollution industry and heavy pollution industry. It is found that the green development efficiency of the clean manufacturing industry is the highest, followed by the heavy pollution industry, and the efficiency of the medium pollution industry is the lowest.

Influence Mechanism of High-Tech Industrial Agglomeration on Green Innovation Performance: Evidence from China

This paper uses panel data from 30 provinces and cities in China between 2008 and 2017. It calculates the green innovation performance of each province and city based on the super-efficiency SBM model of unexpected output and measures the high-tech industrial agglomeration degree of each province and city by using the location entropy method. The influence of high-tech industrial agglomeration on green innovation is also empirically tested. It is found that the agglomeration level of high-tech industry and green innovation performance in Eastern China are much higher than those in Central and Western regions. There is a significant positive relationship between high-tech industrial agglomeration and green innovation performance. Human capital has a mediating effect in the positive impact of high-tech industry agglomeration on green innovation performance. The moderating effect of environmental regulation is markedly established. The higher the level of environmental regulation, the stronger the mediating effect of human capital. Based on the above conclusions, this paper puts forward relevant policy suggestions for promoting the organic combination of green and innovation-driven development and for promoting green transformation in China.

Has the Sustainable Development Planning Policy Promoted the Green Transformation in China's Resource-based Cities?

Scientific evaluation of the transformation effect of resource-based cities is an important way to measure the effect of the implementation of national transformation policies, and it is also an important issue in the study of China's urban transformation development under the "30-60" goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutral. Based on the systematic understanding of the connotation of green transformation development in resource-based cities, this study constructed a framework for evaluating the green transformation performance (GTP) of resource-based cities in China, measured the GTP of 115 prefecture-level and above resource-based cities in China using the entropy weight-TOPSIS model, and further quantitatively assessed the policy effects of sustainable development planning (SDP) in China's resource-based cities from both the overall and local levels using synthetic control method. The results showed the following. (1) Time-series evolution characteristics analysis results showed that the average GTP allocation level of China's resource-based cities showed a steady upward trend in 2009 to 2018, from 0.4196 in 2009 to 0.4946 in 2018, an increase of 17.88%, and the growth rate showed a "W"-type fluctuating change characteristics. (2) Spatial differentiation characteristics analysis results showed that the average GTP allocation level of resource-based cities showed the heterogeneous characteristics of "east>middle>west", "regenerative type> growth type> mature type> declining type", and "ferrous metals> oil and gas> non-metals> forest industry> coal> non-ferrous metals". (3) Overall policy effects analysis results showed that the implementation of the SDP policy had a weak positive promotion effect on the overall transformation and development of resource-based cities. The overall policy effect showed an "M"-type fluctuation trend, with a more obvious pushing effect at the early stage of policy implementation, and then showed a fluctuation and weakening trend. (4) Local policy effects analysis results showed that the implementation of the SDP policy had different impacts on the green transformation and development of different resource-based cities. This policy has positively promoted the GTP of mature cities (e.g., Panzhihua City) and declining cities (e.g., Jiaozuo City), while it has not significantly promoted the GTP of growth cities and regenerative cities. These findings can provide a reference for the optimization and improvement of sustainable development policies in resource-based cities in China.

Environmental regulation, green technology innovation, and industrial structure upgrading: The road to the green transformation of Chinese cities

Environmental regulation can facilitate the economy's green transformation through two channels: green technology innovation and industrial structure upgrading. However, the roles of economic development levels play on the effects of environmental regulation are usually ignored. In view of this, we estimate the heterogeneous impacts of environmental regulation on green technology innovation and industrial structure in 105 Chinese environmental monitoring cities through the partially linear functional-coefficient panel models. The new methodological framework can allow the variable, environmental regulation, to enter the model with coefficients being functions of economic development levels. Our results show that when the economic development levels are low, environmental regulation will restrain the development of green technology innovation but have insignificant impacts on the upgrading of industrial structure. With the growth of economic development levels, environmental regulation will show relatively weak impacts on green technology innovation and industrial structure. And when the economic development levels tend to be high, environmental regulation will significantly promote green technology innovation and industrial structure upgrading. Furthermore, we identify the mixed impacts of environmental regulation in different Chinese cities and put forward relevant policy recommendations for green transformation in China.

Opportunities and Challenges of China’s Low-Carbon Economic Development in the New Era

In the context of the increasingly severe global greenhouse effect, the “14th Five-Year Plan” proposes to “promote green development and promote harmonious coexistence between man and nature”, which provides a new platform for the faster and better development of low-carbon countries. The low-carbon economy has entered a high-quality stage of China’s economic development in the new era, which is of great significance to the overall green transformation of China’s economic and social development. In order to assess the development level of China’s low-carbon economy, this paper estimates the carbon emissions and carbon emission intensity of energy consumption from 2008 to 2017 and applies the LMDI model to decompose the influencing factors of carbon emissions, analyzes the contribution rate of driving factors, and proposes energy saving, emission reduction and low carbon. Developmental countermeasures. The results show that economic growth and energy intensity are the biggest driving factors for promoting and suppressing carbon emissions, respectively. Measures are taken to improve energy structure, increase utilization efficiency, develop low-carbon industries, and promote low-carbon life.

Financial Development and Environmental Regulations: The Two Pillars of Green Transformation in China.

Awareness of the influence of environmental regulations and financial development on green technological progress by Chinese enterprises will help to promote the green transformation of China’s economy, thereby comprehensively enhancing the quality and competitiveness of its economic development. This paper constructs a theoretical framework to analyze environmental regulation, financial development, and green technological progress and studies the relationship among these three indicators using 2004–2018 data from Shandong province. The results show that environmental regulations and financial development both play roles in promoting green technological progress, but as environmental regulation becomes stronger, the effects of finance on green technological progress begin to differ across regions. The results partially verify the applicability of the Porter hypothesis in China, providing a reference for all levels of government to formulate scientific and reasonable environmental rules and policies.

Green transformation in China: Structures of endowment, investment, and employment

This paper analyzes the linkage between structures of endowment, investment, and resultant changes in employment, pollutant emission, and human welfare. Contrary to conventional wisdom, China's endowment structure has shifted toward human capital implying that its latent comparative advantage lies in the human capital–intensive sectors. We employ a System Dynamic model with 10 subsectors, and simulate the impact of changes in investment on changes in pollutant emission, employment, and welfare. Results show that, first, shifting investment to human capital would significantly improve people's welfare by reduced pollution and extended life expectancy. In 2030, average life expectancy will be extended by 0.91 years. Second, human capital–intensive green sectors will expand rapidly, generating a large number of green jobs. A policy implication of this paper is that shifting investment toward human capital can expedite green transformation, improve the resilience of the labor force, and contribute to a rise in human welfare.

Analyzing influencing factors of green transformation in China’s manufacturing industry under environmental regulation: A structural equation model

Abstract The promotion of the green transformation of the manufacturing industry has become the main means to achieve the dual goals of environmental protection and economic growth. Environmental regulation, as an environment governance tool, exerts an important impact on the green transformation of the manufacturing industry. Therefore, this paper focused on the influencing factors of green transformation of the manufacturing industry under environmental regulation. Based on survey data of 500 Chinese manufacturing enterprises (2017), the influencing factors of green transformation were studied by developing a targeted structural equation model. The main conclusions showed that (1) human capital, financing ability, technology innovation, and government behavior all exerted significant positive impact on green transformation performance in the manufacturing industry. (2) Environmental regulation, as a moderating variable, positively affected the green transformation in the manufacturing industry by acting on technology innovation and governmental behavior; however, it decreased the positive impact of financing ability on green transformation. (3) Environmental regulation was a reversal mechanism, which affected green transformation by influencing financing capacity, technology innovation, and governmental behavior of manufacturing enterprises. The study suggested that the government should consider the positive impact of these influencing factors, and design appropriate environmental regulation policies to promote the green transformation in the manufacturing industry to achieve economic green growth.

Driving patterns of industrial green transformation: A multiple regions case learning from China

A core issue for achieving successful industrial green transformation is to identify what driving factors under which kinds of synergistic combination methods with how strong driving strengths will lead to the superior driving patterns of green transformation. This paper focuses on the novel perspective of learning and mining historical cases of industrial green transformation in China's multiple regions, and a three-phase case learning theoretical framework of learning-validation-generalization based on rough set theory is constructed to identify the driving patterns from regional level. The extracted decision rules set reveals the potential synergistic relationships of different heterogeneous driving factors on industrial green transformation from the multiple paths of structure transformation and efficiency transformation. The results show that the key driving factors of structure transformation and efficiency transformation presents certain differences and obvious spatial effect. The higher resource allocation efficiency, stronger investment scale and lower resource endowment dominate the industrial green transformation's core features, which distinguish the superior driving patterns from the inferior, in China's eastern, central and western regions respectively. The driving patterns provide policy-makers extra insights to guide different regions to adjust and optimize their green transformation through developing the regional advantages and bypassing the insufficiencies in historical cases.

Environmental regulations, environmental governance efficiency and the green transformation of China's iron and steel enterprises

Based on micro-level enterprise panel data from 2005 to 2014, a slack-based global data envelopment analysis (DEA) model and a global Malmquist-Luenberger index model are used to calculate the environmental governance efficiency (EGE) of China's iron and steel enterprises (ISEs). Then, the different effects of two types of environmental regulation on EGE of China's ISEs are analysed. The results show that the overall level of EGE for China's ISEs has remained low over the past 10 years. The total factor environmental governance efficiency (TFEGE) presents a decreasing trend from 2005 to 2014, and the decline in TFEGE is mainly attributed to the technical progress change index (GTPCH). Moreover, the bootstrap DEA method is used for bias correction, and the correction efficiency values are all within the confidence interval, improving the accuracy of EGE evaluation. The regression analysis results show that different types of environmental regulations exert heterogeneous effects on TFEGE. The relationship between market incentive environmental regulation and TFEGE has an inverted U-shaped, implying that although market incentive environmental regulation may improve the TFEGE in the short term, continuously increasing this intensity would inhibit it. However, command control environmental regulation and TFEGE have a positive but not significant relationship.

The threshold effect of environmental regulation on the green transition of the industrial economy in China

The goal of environmental regulation is to simultaneously achieve a win–win situation of economic growth and environmental quality. Based on the Porter hypothesis and panel data from 2001 to 2011, this study conducts empirical research on the intensity of environmental regulation and industrial green transformation in China. The results indicate that environmental regulation can effectively promote industrial green transformation by improving green total factor productivity (G.T.F.P.). But there is no simple linear relationship between the two. And there is a threshold effect, that is, the degree of influence of environmental regulation on industrial green transformation can change with the change of threshold value. Therefore, government policy should not focus only on the environmental regulation intensity, which cannot efficiently improve the G.T.F.P., or accelerate the green transition process. Instead, government should adopt different environmental policies in different industrial sectors.

The Effectiveness of the Multilateral Coalition to Develop a Green Agricultural Products Market in China Based on a TU Cooperative Game Analysis

Green agriculture can improve biodiversity, increase farmers’ income, reduce agricultural non-point source pollution, solve food safety issues, and will be an important way to promote sustainable development in China. At present, the green transformation of China’s agriculture has encountered a bottleneck in the development of a green agricultural product market. How to develop a green agricultural product market has become an issue worthy of in-depth study in the academia. Previous studies have already given persuasive explanations for the inability to form a green agricultural product market, but few have explored its development path from the angle of cooperation. By employing the method of a Transferable Utilities (TU) cooperative game, and based on theoretical analyses and hypothetical data, this thesis aims to prove the effectiveness of the multilateral coalition to develop the green agricultural product market in China. The results show the effectiveness of the developed model of the green agricultural product market in which producers, consumers, food safety inspection departments, and e-commerce platforms cooperate with each other. This model meets the objective needs of the times and that of the market economy. According to the marginal contribution value of participants in different coalition orders, this thesis finds 6 kinds of coalition orders. When producers and consumers of green agricultural products enter the coalition in the last place, the marginal contribution value is maximized, which reflects the importance of the supply side and demand side of green agricultural products. In other words, the development of the green agricultural product market is a dynamic process—determined by consumers and promoted by producers—in which both sides promote and restrict each other. Finally, this article presents two policy recommendations: at the national level, to clearly proposes a strategy to build a green agricultural product e-commerce platform in China and to launch a pilot application for the specialized e-commerce platform for green agricultural products in the Guizhou province.

Measuring the Dynamic Efficiency of Regional Industrial Green Transformation in China

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.

Green Transformation in China

China's economic and social development not only faces common challenges in the stage of growth, but also has to address the special resource and environmental challenges. In the future, China should demonstrate the greenness of economic and social development, and carry out holistic green transformation of all aspects including the social system and thinking. In the course of industrialization and urbanization, China should promote ecological harmony and social progress and enhance the greenness of the whole economy. Environmental conditions should be improved according to people's will. China should explore new social management modes, alleviate the resource and environmental pressure brought by the high-consumption lifestyle, and realize green social progress. The government, industrial and commercial enterprises and the public should implement the concept of green development in economic strategies, policies and actions unswervingly and persistently.

A Study on Industrial Green Transformation in China

China’s speedy industrialization has undertaken mostly a crude path with extensive energy consumption and severe environmental damage. In face of the challenge of global warming and resource restrictions, it calls for urgent green transformation for the sustainable development of China’s industry. With huge potentials and more general benefits than costs, the industrial green transformation in China will have more positive effects and accelerate the whole process of the development of China’s green economy. From this perspective, China needs to adopt a comprehensive and open mechanism for green transformation with more strict environmental regulations, effective energy conservation and emissions reduction, green technology R&D and application, as well as international cooperation in the related fields with market-oriented reform, government strategies and regulations, proactive response from the industry sector, self-initiative of enterprises and active public participation.