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The transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry is supported by smart and green manufacturing, which have great potential to empower the nation's green development. This study examines the impact of the Made in China 2025 industrial policy on urban green economic growth. This study applies the super-slacks-based measure model to measure cities' green economic growth, using the double machine learning model, which overcomes the limitations of the linear setting of traditional causal inference models and maintains estimation accuracy under high-dimensional control variables, to conduct an empirical analysis based on panel data of 281 Chinese cities from 2006 to 2021. The results reveal that the Made in China 2025 strategy significantly drives urban green economic growth, and this finding holds after a series of robustness tests. A mechanism analysis indicates that the Made in China 2025 strategy promotes green economic growth through green technology progress, optimizing energy consumption structure, upgrading industrial structure, and strengthening environmental supervision. In addition, the policy has a stronger driving effect for cities with high manufacturing concentration, industrial intelligence, and digital finance development. This study provides valuable theoretical insights and policy implications for government planning to promote high-quality development through industrial policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The large-scale loss of ecosystem assets around the world, and the resultant reduction in the provision of nature's benefits to people, underscores the urgent need for better metrics of ecological performance as well as their integration into decision-making. Gross ecosystem product (GEP) is a measure of the aggregate monetary value of final ecosystem-related goods and services in a specific area and for a given accounting period. GEP accounting captures the use of many ecosystem services in production processes across the economy, which are then valued in terms of their benefits to society. GEP has five key elements that make it transparent, trackable, and readily understandable: (1) a focus on nature's contributions to people; (2) the measurement of ecosystem assets as stocks and ecosystem services as flows; (3) the quantification of ecosystem service use; (4) an understanding of ecosystem service supply chains through value realization; and (5) the disaggregation of benefits across groups. Correspondingly, a series of innovative policies based on GEP have been designed and implemented in China. The theoretical and practical lessons provided by these experiences can support continued policy innovation for green and inclusive development around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined villagers' intention of pro-environmental behavior while supporting the Landcare Policy in China. The research team conducted field surveys of villagers from four famous scenic spots of Cili, which is near the world natural heritage site of the Zhangjiajie natural landscape core area. This area has developed rural tourism, many local villagers rely on tourism to obtain their livelihood income. However, the area is now affected by the environmental remediation policy called Landcare Policy. Cultivated land near the tourist area needs to be repaired, which affects the tourism income of some local villagers. Therefore, local villagers are facing a contradiction between tourism development and environmental protection. The study chose the change in local villagers' pro-environmental intention as the research content. Then we adopted an empirically validated norm activation model (NAM) from Schwartz, and merged the NAM with the expectancy theory of Vroom, based on 511 valid responses from the field questionnaire surveys, we aimed to develop a theoretical framework for researchers to understand the change in villagers' pro-environmental behaviors, concerning the balance between rural tourism livelihood benefits and environmental remediation behavior. Structural equation modeling was conducted for each index of the responses, the findings showed that the merged model had 76.46% better predictive accuracy of villagers' pro-environmental intentions than applying Schwartz's NAM independently. This study found that the motivational force of this new theory significantly influences environmental personal norms due to the joint impact of valence, instrumentality, and expectancy. Villagers with a positive pro-environmental behavior intention expect good tourism benefits and environmental living conditions under the impact of the Landcare policy in rural tourism destinations near the famous natural heritage site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined villagers' intention of pro-environmental behavior while supporting the Landcare Policy in China. The research team conducted field surveys of villagers from four famous scenic spots of Cili, which is near the world natural heritage site of the Zhangjiajie natural landscape core area. This area has developed rural tourism, many local villagers rely on tourism to obtain their livelihood income. However, the area is now affected by the environmental remediation policy called Landcare Policy. Cultivated land near the tourist area needs to be repaired, which affects the tourism income of some local villagers. Therefore, local villagers are facing a contradiction between tourism development and environmental protection. The study chose the change in local villagers' pro-environmental intention as the research content. Then we adopted an empirically validated norm activation model (NAM) from Schwartz, and merged the NAM with the expectancy theory of Vroom, based on 511 valid responses from the field questionnaire surveys, we aimed to develop a theoretical framework for researchers to understand the change in villagers' pro-environmental behaviors, concerning the balance between rural tourism livelihood benefits and environmental remediation behavior. Structural equation modeling was conducted for each index of the responses, the findings showed that the merged model had 76.46% better predictive accuracy of villagers' pro-environmental intentions than applying Schwartz's NAM independently. This study found that the motivational force of this new theory significantly influences environmental personal norms due to the joint impact of valence, instrumentality, and expectancy. Villagers with a positive pro-environmental behavior intention expect good tourism benefits and environmental living conditions under the impact of the Landcare policy in rural tourism destinations near the famous natural heritage site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a decomposition and emissions matrix is developed to identify the roles (giver or taker) played by the sectors in the greenhouse gas emissions for the economy of Beijing in China. Our results indicate that services were the most important emitter if we consider the total (direct and indirect) emissions. In addition to Construction, Scientific studies and technical services and Finance sectors of services were the largest takers. They have a large role in boosting greenhouse gas emissions throughout the economy of Beijing. As the basis and supporter of production activities, the electricity production and the transportation sectors were the greatest givers. More emphasis should be placed on using clean energy and carbon capture and storage technologies to reduce emissions within these sectors. Based on the roles played by these sectors in greenhouse gas emissions, some policy implications were proposed for energy utilization and carbon emissions trading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air deterioration caused by pollution has harmed public health. The existing studies on the economic loss caused by a variety of air pollutants in multiple cities are lacking. To understand the effect of different pollutants on public health and to provide the basis of the environmental governance for governments, based on the dose-response relation and the willingness to pay, this paper used the latest available data of the inhalable particulate matter (PM) and sulphur dioxide (SO) from January 2015 to June 2015 in 74 cities by establishing the lowest and the highest limit scenarios. The results show that (1) in the lowest and highest limit scenario, the health-related economic loss caused by PM and SO represented 1.63 and 2.32 % of the GDP, respectively; (2) For a single city, in the lowest and the highest limit scenarios, the highest economic loss of the public health effect caused by PM and SO was observed in Chongqing; the highest economic loss of the public health effect per capita occurred in Hebei Baoding. The highest proportion of the health-related economic loss accounting for GDP was found in Hebei Xingtai. The main reason is that the terrain conditions are not conducive to the spread of air pollutants in Chongqing, Baoding and Xingtai, and the three cities are typical heavy industrial cities that are based on coal resources. Therefore, this paper proposes to improve the energy structure, use the advanced production process, reasonably control the urban population growth, and adopt the emissions trading system in order to reduce the economic loss caused by the effects of air pollution on public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regime shift often results in large, abrupt, and persistent changes in the provision of ecosystem services and can therefore have significant impacts on human wellbeing. Understanding regime shifts has profound implications for ecosystem recovery and management. China's coastal ecosystems have experienced substantial deterioration within the past decades, at a scale and speed the world has never seen before. Yet, information about this coastal ecosystem change from a dynamics perspective is quite limited. In this review, I synthesize existing information on coastal ecosystem regime shifts in China and discuss their interactions and cascading effects. The accumulation of regime shifts in China's coastal ecosystems suggests that the desired system resilience has been profoundly eroded, increasing the potential of abrupt shifts to undesirable states at a larger scale, especially given multiple escalating pressures. Policy and management strategies need to incorporate resilience approaches in order to cope with future challenges and avoid major losses in China's coastal ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has among the highest biodiversities in the world, but faces extreme biodiversity losses due to the country's huge population and its recent explosive socioeconomic development. Despite huge efforts and investments by the government and Chinese society to conserve biodiversity, especially in recent decades, biodiversity losses may not have been reversed, and may even have been exacerbated by unintended consequences resulting from these projects. China's centralized approach to biodiversity conservation, with limited local participation, creates an inflexible and inefficient approach because of conflicts between local communities and national administrators over the benefits. Although community-based conservation may be an imperfect approach, it is an essential component of a successful future national conservation plan. Biodiversity conservation should be considered from the perspective of systems engineering and a governance structure that combines centralization with community-level conservation. In this paper, we describe China's complex challenge: how to manage interactions between humans and nature to find win-win solutions that can ensure long-term biodiversity conservation without sacrificing human concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Porter hypothesis states that environmental regulation may lead to win-win opportunities, that is, improve the productivity and reduce the undesirable output simultaneously. Based on directional distance function, this paper proposes a novel dynamic activity analysis model to forecast the possibilities of win-win development in Chinese industry between 2011 and 2050. The consistent bootstrap estimation procedures are also developed for statistical inference of the point forecasts. The evidence reveals that the appropriate energy-saving and emission-abating regulation will significantly result in both the net growth of potential output and the increasing growth of total factor productivity for most industrial sectors in a statistical sense. This favors Porter hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental pollution liability insurance was officially introduced in China only in 2006, as part of new market-based approaches for managing environmental risks. By 2012, trial applications of pollution insurance had been launched in 14 provinces and cities. More than ten insurance companies have entered the pollution insurance market with their own products and contracts. Companies in environmentally sensitive sectors and high-risk industries bought pollution insurance, and a few successful compensation cases have been reported. Still, pollution insurance faces a number of challenges in China. The absence of a national law weakens the legal basis of pollution insurance, and poor technical support stagnates further implementation. Moreover, current pollution insurance products have limited risk coverage, high premium rates, and low loss ratios, which make them fairly unattractive to polluters. Meanwhile, low awareness of environmental and social liabilities leads to limited demand for pollution insurance products by industrial companies. Hence, the pollution insurance market is not yet flourishing in China. To improve this situation, this economic instrument needs stronger backing by the Chinese state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the Chinese policy environment as regards the experiences of foreign firms in China. In particular, the study focuses on the changes in China's policies toward foreign-invested firms and the companies' perceptions of protectionism of the Chinese regulatory environment. Theoretically, the paper reflects approaches in international political economy and business studies on the bargaining relations between host states and firms, and institutional perspective on business strategy that focuses on the dynamic interaction between organizations and their institutional environment. Hence, the approach takes into account the formal and informal institutional constraints that firms face in a particular institutional framework. Drawing from international survey data, as well as interviews with China-based Finnish firms, the paper analyzes the different types of formal and informal protectionism that foreign companies face in China. It is found that foreign firms perceive the Chinese policy measures as increasingly protective, strict toward foreigners, and favoring of local companies. This is based on China's strategy to remove the earlier preferences for inward foreign direct investment and to support, instead, the growth of indigenous companies. At the same time, the Chinese market presents such a potential that attracts foreign firms to increasingly invest in the country. China has a strong position in competing for investments: its aspiration for higher technology, together with its labor resources, gives China an unique advantage in bargaining with foreign firms over investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking into account the fact of global economic integration, this paper improves the RICE model and the MRICES model, and establishes a new integrated assessment model MRICES-2012, which takes Ramsey utility as the standard of fairness. Based on the model, schemes which meet the global emission mitigation targets as well as the interests of developing countries are simulated to assess the international fairness of emission reduction. Therefore, a new feasible scheme is proposed, which can not only reach the Copenhagen Consensus but also ensure interests of every country. Specifically speaking, the US and Japan cut emissions 80% and 70% respectively by 2050 relative to the 1990 level; the EU and other developed countries cut 80% by 2050 relative to 1990 level; high human development countries cut 50% by 2050 relative to 1990 level; all above-mentioned countries start emission reduction from 2020 and keep emission on 2050 level by 2100; China begins emission reduction from 2030 and cuts emission 15% by 2050 and 25% by 2100 relative to 2005 level; medium human development countries keep emission on 2020 level by 2100; low human development countries do not take part in reduction on emission intensity and global emission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is a large country by area. In situ monitoring of the environment cannot meet the demand of the society. For large areas, remote sensing is the only viable technology for environmental monitoring of the entire area. Although satellite observation capabilities as well as remotely sensed data acquired on board of satellites from both within and outside China are widely available, research is rare that targets the entire territory of China for environmental monitoring. In this paper, the process of environmental change has been categorized into changes in driving forces, environmental change, materials transport and transformation, concentration and abundance change, exposure and infection change of human and ecosystems, and impacts. The potential in monitoring changes in these various aspects is assessed. The progress of environmental change monitoring over the entire territory of China is reviewed. It is suggested that at the methodological level, remote sensing should not only be applied to observation and experiments as well as understanding the change mechanism, but also be coupled with environmental simulation and forecasting so as to support environmental policy making. At the application level, remote sensing should be used beyond its traditional application fields to include species diversity, biological invasion, public health, air and water quality monitoring. Finally, at the technical level, systematic research should be devoted to the improvement of operational and automatic use of remotely sensed data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China represents the third largest economy and the highest level of national carbon dioxide emissions when compared to other nations across the globe. Yet, little social science research has focused on the environmentally oriented behaviors of Chinese nationals, key to understanding levels of environmental impact. This study examines, in China, gender differences in environmentally oriented behaviors, environmental knowledge, and general environmental concern. Making use of path analyses, we identify a pattern of gender differences similar to common findings in the West: women demonstrated greater participation in environmental behaviors inside of the home (e.g., recycling), while outside of the home (e.g., environmental organization donations) no gendered patterns were exhibited. However, Chinese women expressed lower levels of concern than men—a finding opposite of most Western studies. Also distinct from other settings, in China, higher levels of knowledge regarding environmental issues did, indeed, translate into pro-environmental behaviors—thereby not exhibiting the knowledge-behavior gap demonstrated elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The life of impoverished people can be damaged by adverse environmental conditions, but these people can also be harmed by environmental conservation programs, particularly when the guiding policy ignores their needs. To improve the social and economic effectiveness of environmental protection, governments must understand that the ultimate goal of environmental protection is to improve human livelihoods, not just restore vegetation. The elimination of poverty by the development of sustainable, long-term enterprises is a precondition for successful ecological restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is the world's most populous country and has one of the largest territories. As such, Chinese attitudes and behavior with regard to environmental issues are key factors in protecting the world's natural resources and environment. In this study, we surveyed a random sample of 5000 citizens from six Chinese provinces (Beijing, Shanghai, Hubei, Hunan, Henan, and Shaanxi) to understand their environmental attitudes, contrasts between the attitudes of citizens in different demographic groups, and their willingness to invest in environmental conservation. The results indicated that policymakers and the public increasingly recognize the key role that environmental restoration plays in protecting the overall health of the environment. In total, 91% of the interviewees believed that the environment had deteriorated severely during the past decade, compared with 44% in a 1999 survey. In addition, 78% of the interviewees supported their government's investment of more than 300 billion RMB (;10% of total government revenues in 2004) in the "Grain for Green Project," which discouraged unsustainable land use by compensating farmers and herders for abandoning farming and grazing on marginal land. There was a strong correlation between environmental attitudes and net income and education levels, and other differences were based on the respondents' age, gender, job, and location. Net income and education level were the key factors that affected environmental attitudes. Based on these results, we propose that successful environmental restoration projects must include both an education component and an economic development component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on Chinese president Xi Jinping's September 2015 announcement of plans for a Chinese national emissions-trading system to limit greenhouse-gas production. The plan is related to a 2014 climate change agreement between the U.S. and China. Details on other joint environmental plans by China and the U.S. are presented. It is suggested that the cap-and-trade program could contribute to the development of a global climate pact ahead of United Nations (UN) climate talks in December 2015.

The authors discuss clean air strategy for China. They mention that the country have to overcome two major factors to meet the country's ambitious air quality policy such as the increase in fossil-fuel usage and the decentralized system of environmental enforcement. They state that China needs to promote development concerning the constrained fossil-fuel use instead of using more energy to ensure economic growth.

In this article, the author comments on a study on ecological migration (EM) in the Tibetan Plateau of China. He stresses that conservation Tibetan grasslands greatly contribute to the ecological services in the region including carbon storage, soil erosion control, and water regulation. However, he discusses that the EM government policies may affect the livelihood of Tibetan pastoralists and the community surrounding the area.

In this article the author discusses the Global Green New Deal, an initiative taken by the United Nations Environment Programme for the revival of global economy. It informs that China and South Korea, member countries of Group of Twenty (G 20) have invested in environmental stimulus projects but other member countries of this group still need to invest in order to save the planet and the economy. He feels members of G 20 should take a global leadership in promoting green recovery. He says that the biggest failure of the G 20 is that it has neglected to address the economic and environmental vulnerability of the world's poor.

The article reports on the commitment of the central government in China to intensify efforts in cleaning up the environment. However, the intention of government has been bombarded with various challenges making it difficult to assure that the implementation of changes in rules and environmental regulations is successful. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE)and the Natural Resources Defense Council revealed that a remarkable number of cities violated several environmental laws. The information which was released in the Internet aims to alert the government and exert effort in responding to the problem.

A letter to the editor is presented discussing China's policies on reducing carbon emissions and its subsidizing practices.

A letter to the editor is presented discussing the Chinese government's policies on reducing carbon emissions and the country's energy market.

The article focuses on eco-environment protection policy and the countermeasures imposed by the government on the management of desertification areas in northern China. The rapid growth rates and extensive distribution of desertification in northern China has become the major problem for regional environmental and social economical development. To prevent further spreading, the government has used policies like returning farmland to forestry and pasture, conserving water, prohibition of grazing, and migration of farmers as primary measures for regulating eco-environment in desertified areas.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to an article by Bo Zhang published in the journal in 2015, which focuses on the need for China's citizens to have a legal right to safeguard the quality of their environment.

In this article, the author mentions that China should upgrade its climate policy from reducing carbon intensity to setting a long-term cap on total emissions. Topics discussed include carbon dioxide mitigation, plans of the U.S. to cut carbon pollution from power plants and carbon emissions in China. It mentions that China should delink the relation between economic growth and emissions.

The author reflects on the progress of the emissions trading scheme in China. He cites the implementation of seven trading trials of the scheme in the country that covers around one-third of energy use, however, he also mentions the challenges and issues associated with the program due to several questions pertaining to its energy use and carbon emission calculation. However, the author asserts that the country will be able develop a reliable system for the program to ensure its success.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article which discusses the consideration of environmental and energy policies in China to the economic realities of environmental decline and governance in the country.

The article reports on the prohibition of using plastic shopping bags to clean up the environment and save energy in China. It states that starting June 1, 2008, shopkeepers are not permitted to distribute plastic bags for free to their costumers. Establishments who fail to comply will be penalized. Also, the production and sale of ultrathin bags having the measurement of less than 0.025 millimeters thick will also be banned. The development was welcomed by environmentalist groups, however, a social survey found that half of the consumers opposed the ban.

Observes that China's long-term economic and environmental interests would be best served by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. China's motives for reducing emissions; Report on Chinese climate research; Perspective of Chinese policy-makers; Impact of increased emissions on China; China conditionally committed to reducing emissions; Priority of development over environmental protection.

Mentions that China's State Environmental Protection Bureau has ordered all registered small factories with serious pollution problems to close on October 1, 1996.