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The core of low-carbon development lies in reducing carbon sources and increasing carbon sinks, and the construction of free trade zones (FTZs), as an experimental field for China' s comprehensively deepening reforms, is of great significance to urban lowcarbon development. Based on the panel data from 288 cities in China from 2007 to 2020, this paper first comprehensively evaluated the carbon neutrality levels of cities from two aspects: carbon emission and sequestration. Then, it used the multi-period difference-indifferences method and the spatial Durbin model to explore the 'low carbon effect' of the establishment of FTZs. The results showed that: the establishment of FTZs had a significant impact on the low-carbon development of the cities where they were located. Specifically, the establishment of FTZs could drive urban low-carbon development from within the cities by improving their digitization and resource allocation efficiency. At the same time, increased government attention to green development enhanced the carbon emission disincentive and boosted carbon uptake facilitation, fostering a more robust urban low-carbon development. Moreover, the carbon emission suppression effect, carbon absorption promotion effect, and carbon neutral effect of establishing the FTZs varied according to the batches of the establishment, city location, and city characteristics. The 'low-carbon effect' of the first two batches of FTZs, the region south of the Qinling-Huaihe River, and the cities with a higher degree of openness were more pronounced overall. Furthermore, the establishment of the FTZs also had a certain spatial spillover effect on urban low-carbon development. Based on these findings, the paper suggests prioritizing top-level design, exerting comparative advantages, and promoting the low-carbon development benchmark area in a gradient manner. Acceleration of trade facilitation and digital financial reform, promotion of the digital transformation of traditional industries with advantages, and encouragement of digital and low-carbon deep integration are also recommended. The introduction of highquality foreign investment should be combined with the improvement of the effectiveness of supervision and services to improve the efficiency of resource allocation. The study proposes leveraging digital platforms and free trade alliances to maximize the FTZs' catalytic effects. Overall, this study offers significant theoretical and practical insights for enhancing the construction of the FTZs, promoting urban low-carbon development, and advancing towards the goal of carbon neutrality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an essential factor of production in economic development, land is an important tool for local governments to boost economic growth. The goals of reaching peak carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality will push local governments to change the extensive mode of attracting high energy-consuming and high-pollution enterprises by transferring industrial land at low prices. The lowcarbon city pilot policy is important for China to achieve green and low-carbon economic transformation and sustainable development. This policy will inevitably influence the land transfer behavior of local governments in heavily polluting industries. Based on the panel data of 286 cities from 2007 to 2019, this paper took the low-carbon city pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment and used the time-varying difference-in-differences method to empirically study the relationship between the pilot policy and the land transfer behavior of local governments. The results showed that: ① The implementation of the low-carbon city pilot policy significantly reduced the area and number of land transfers in heavily polluting industries. The above conclusions still held after a series of robustness tests. ② The impact of the low-carbon city pilot policy on land transfer in heavily polluting industries was affected by the intensity of environmental regulation of local governments and the tenure of officials. The stronger the intensity of environmental regulation in the pilot city became, the more the area and number of land transfers in heavily polluting industries were reduced. When the tenure of the secretary of the municipal CPC committee in the pilot city was less than or equal to 3 years, the area and number of land transfers in heavily polluting industries were significantly reduced. However, the age of the secretary of the municipal CPC committee had no significant impact on the land transfer in heavily polluting industries. ③ Heterogeneity analysis showed that non-resource-based cities, cities with high levels of economic development, and large cities displayed a higher reduction in the area and number of land transfers in heavily polluting industries. Based on these, this paper puts forward suggestions from three aspects: we should further promote the low-carbon city pilot policy, add environmental objectives to the assessment system of officials to increase the constraints of environmental objectives, and formulate and implement environmental policies in accordance with local conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saving energy resources and reducing energy intensity are crucial to promoting China' s major strategic goals of reaching peak carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality, and are hence key to the promotion of green transformation and development in the new development stage. As an important practice, the policy of establishing pilot zones for green finance reform and innovations in China aims to promote green finance reform in depth, construct ecological civilization, and realize green economic transformation. Can the policy reduce energy intensity and contribute to energy conservation? What is its impact mechanism? There is a shortage of systematic analysis in academia on these issues. With panel data from Chinese cities from 2007 to 2020 and a generalized synthetic control method, this paper evaluated how the establishment of pilot zones for green finance reform and innovations affected energy intensity and analyzed its impact mechanisms. The results showed that: ① The implementation of the policy significantly reduced the energy intensity of the pilot zones, and the energy-saving effect exhibited 'policy first' and timeliness characteristics. ② The policy-induced energysaving effect was achieved by improving green innovation, easing financing constraints, optimizing industrial structure, and strengthening environmental governance. ③ The policy' s energy-saving effect was more remarkable in areas with better marketization and a higher education level. The findings suggest that the government should fully consider the differences in aspects such as institutional environment and resource endowment among varying regions, design distinct measures to attract more market players to participate in the green finance system oriented by energy efficiency improvement, energy structure transformation, and environmental governance, and create a much better market-oriented environment for green innovation and corporate financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China further clarifies the major development goal of accelerating the transition to a model of green development. Improving carbon emission efficiency is undoubtedly a necessary way to achieve this goal. At present, with the pressing goals of reaching peak carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality and the tendency of the financial industry to be diverted out of the real economy, the high-quality development of the financial industry has become an objective need to improve carbon emission efficiency and promote the realization of the 'dual carbon' goals as scheduled. However, there are obvious differences in carbon emission efficiency and financial industry high-quality development between different regions, which makes it urgent to realize efficient collaboration between inter-regional carbon emission efficiency and high-quality development in the financial industry. This paper used the coupling coordination degree model, the Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition method, and the spatial Kernel density estimation method to measure the coupling coordination degree between China' s carbon emission efficiency and the high-quality development in the financial industry and to fully reveal its spatio-temporal evolution characteristics. The results showed that: ① The coupling coordination degree between carbon emission efficiency and high-quality development in the financial industry basically stabilized at the intermediate coordination level. The key to advancing this coupling coordination degree to a high-quality coordination level was to improve the level of high-quality development in the financial industry. The eastern region rose to a good coordination level. The western and central regions were stable at the intermediate coordination level. The northeastern region was mainly at the primary coordination level. ② The coupling coordination of carbon emission efficiency and high-quality development in the financial industry had a problem of spatial distribution imbalance. Inter-regional differences were the main source of spatial differences. The contribution rates of intra-regional differences and the intensity of transvariation to spatial differences were relatively low. ③ There was a multipolar differentiation phenomenon in the coupling coordination between carbon emission efficiency and high-quality development in the financial industry in the central region. The coupling coordination in both the western and northeast regions showed a polarization trend. ④ Under the condition of considering spatial factors and time span, most provinces and their neighboring provinces had a spatial connection between the coupling coordination of carbon emission efficiency and high-quality development of the financial industry. These findings are conducive to the promotion of the construction of a collaborative linkage pattern between inter-regional carbon emission efficiency and the high-quality development in the financial industry. They can serve as an important decision-making reference for realizing the overall transition to a model of green development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of climate warming on world agricultural production and food security has become increasingly obvious. As an important source of carbon emissions and the carbon sink system, the green development of agriculture is one of the important ways to alleviate the crisis and achieve China' s goals of reaching peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality. Exploiting the potential of agricultural carbon sinks and accurately calculating agricultural net carbon emissions are of great significance to promoting the green development of agriculture meeting the ' dual carbon' goals. Based on the dual characteristics of the agricultural carbon cycle, this paper sorted out the logical relationship between agricultural green development and the agricultural carbon cycle, incorporated the role of agricultural carbon sinks into the calculation framework of agricultural carbon emissions, and measured China' s agricultural net carbon emissions from 2000 to 2019 by time and region. The decoupling model of agricultural net carbon emissions from agricultural economic growth was constructed. The results of the study found that the total amount of carbon emissions from agricultural sources increased from 277.899 million t in 2000 to 308.383 1 million t in 2019, with an average annual growth rate of 0.52%, but the agricultural carbon emission intensity showed a trend of continuous decline; the agricultural carbon sink increased from 99.539 9 million t in 2000 to 133.039 million t in 2019, with an average annual growth rate of 1.46%, and the agricultural carbon sink resources were considerable. The intensity of agricultural carbon source emissions was higher in the west than in other regions and there was a clear gap with the eastern region. The total amount of agricultural carbon source emissions, carbon sinks, and net carbon emissions all showed a medium-high pattern. The decoupling relationship between agricultural economic growth and agricultural net carbon emissions was mainly manifested in two decoupling states: strong decoupling and weak decoupling. Nearly 50% of the provinces achieved the ideal strong decoupling state in terms of agricultural green development, while the remaining provinces were in a weak decoupling state, and the decoupling state was generally ideal. Finally, this paper puts forward targeted countermeasures and suggestions to promote the green development of agriculture and help achieve the ' dual carbon' goals: we should accurately locate the carbon source; ensure the ' double bottom line' of food security and pig production capacity under low-carbon agriculture; resolve the resource endowment differences between regions; explore the potential of the agricultural carbon trading market; create a new path for farmers to increase their income, maintain the strong and improve the weak; and strive to achieve the ' package' of strong decoupling in agriculture to help achieve the ' dual carbon' goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Big data, a vital driving force of high-quality economic development in China, improves both the speed and efficiency of information exchange and knowledge dissemination. Existing studies have conducted a series of discussions on the dividend effect of big data development, but few have analyzed it from the perspective of corporate green development. Based on the theoretical analysis of the impact of big data development on the internal mechanisms of corporate green technology innovation and on the regulatory role of intellectual property protection, in light of the exogenous policy shock from the ‘National Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Zones,’ this paper studied the A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen by adopting the difference-in-differences model (DID) to evaluate the impact of big data development on corporate green technology innovation and the moderating effect of intellectual property protection between them. The research results showed that the development of big data significantly promoted corporate green technology innovation, and that the conclusion still held after a series of robustness tests. Heterogeneity tests showed that the promoting effect of big data development on corporate green technology innovation was more observable in large-scale enterprises, state-owned businesses, and companies with high-level access to data from local governments. The mechanism test indicated that the development of big data could promote corporate green technology innovation by improving the intensity of regional environmental regulation, easing the financing constraints of enterprises, and improving their human capital level. The moderating effect test showed that intellectual property protection played a significant positive moderating role between big data development and corporate green technology innovation. Accordingly, the government should improve the big data development policies to promote deep integration of big data and the real economy in a consistent manner, reinforce the system design concerning corporate green technology innovation guided by policies of big data development, and combine big data development with green development goals such as achieving peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality. Meanwhile, policies should be refined based on different types of enterprises in different regions so that a long-term mechanism can be established to support corporate green innovation development. It is also necessary to strengthen the construction of an intellectual property protection system so as to accelerate corporate green technology innovation and green development more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global warming is evolving into a crisis affecting the future of humanity. As the world' s second largest economy, China is actively involved in global climate governance, proposing to achieve the goals of reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, and has successively introduced the corresponding ' 1+N' policy system. This paper attempts to interpret and analyze 23 policy texts relevant to the achievement of the goals with over 160 000 characters from the CPC Central Committee, the State Council, and relevant ministries and provinces through two typical qualitative research methods-ground theory and institutional grammar tool, to outline the elemental structure and functional profile of the pathways of China' s carbon peak and carbon neutrality policies, and to clarify the group structure and regulation intensity of different policy pathways. Based on grounded theory, it is found that these pathways are already very comprehensive and complete. Among them, the policy pathways under the administrative mechanism include: high energy consumption and high emission industrial control; regulations and standards systems; carbon reduction governance in key industries; control over the amount and intensity of energy consumption; and carbon absorption capacity of ecosystems. The policy pathways under the market mechanism include circular economy development; energy transformation development; cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions; green finance development; and green transformation development. The results of institutional grammar tool research show that relevant policy pathways are dominated by ADIC normative condition statements (177, accounting for 52%), followed by AIC strategy statements (130, accounting for 38%), while ADICO rule-based statements are the least, with only 33, accounting for 10%. Given the pressure of time constraints and heavy tasks to achieve the goals, ADICO' s institutional grammar structure is the most desirable policy statement paradigm because it is more intense in its policy regulation, and it is easier to achieve its governance effectiveness. Undoubtedly, policy regulation is an important tool to effectively alleviate the pressure of the governance of the goals and to ensure the effectiveness of such governance. Policy regulation mainly focuses on the industrial sector with high energy consumption and high emissions, relying on top-down hierarchical organization and using political mobilization and administrative decrees as means to promote governance in the high carbon emission sector. By further constructing a theoretical framework of regulation mechanisms, relevant governance paradigms are classified as ' mandatory governance' and ' flexible governance' according to the intensity of regulation. It is found that the underlying logic behind these two paradigms is precisely the mobilization of the administrative mechanism and the allocation of resources under the market mechanism. Simultaneously, with the gradual achievement of the goals and the gradual decoupling of carbon emissions from economic development, the governance logic should gradually shift from ' mandatory governance' to ' flexible governance,' and from ' administrative hierarchical mobilization' to ' balanced allocation of market resources.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]