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The research calculated the waste paper recovery rate, and analyzed the main factors influencing waste paper recovery rate in China with time series data from 1970 to 2012. The consequent recovery rate and utilization rate of waste paper show that the recovery of paper products has been experiencing a rapid growth in China, but it cannot meet the domestic need. The empirical analysis proves that demand is the main driver to stimulate the increase of waste paper recovery rate in China; the increased average GDP per capita and proportion of waste paper pulp are two other important factors; the increased urbanization rate does not exert significant influence. In the circumstance of insufficient timber supply, the policy of eliminating straw pulp capacities for paper-making indusrty improves the recovery rate of waste paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how China has been portrayed in international cinema throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Using the Internet Movie Database, the authors extract the plot synopses of 4,927 China-related films. The authors apply the word embedding technology and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model to explore the cinematic plots, as well as achieve the sentiment score and ascertain the socioeconomic factors of score change. The findings indicate that the image of China in international cinema has been associated with gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign direct investment. The image of China changed from the barbarian to the schemer, and finally to the civilized great power, giving the insight into cultural trends that traditional research methods cannot capture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the economic impacts of China's emissions trading system (ETS), implemented in 2013, in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita GDP. The methodology drew on a difference-in-differences (DID) method using dynamic panel data for 30 provincial regions. The estimation results show that implementing an ETS policy has statistically significant negative effects on economic growth. When considering the additional control variables, these effects are still statistically significant. Furthermore, these negative impacts increase over time with respect to both GDP and per capita GDP. The counterfactual tests confirm the robustness of our DID estimation results. The specific influence mechanism of China's ETS policy was finally discussed. Our findings provide a quantitative decision-making support for popularizing ETS policy in China. Based on our DID model, empirical investigations of the ETS policy, especially concerning economic growth in other regions would produce prolific contributions to the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local regression has an advantage over global regression by allowing coefficients that qualify variables relationships being heterogeneous, where such varying regression relationships are nonstationarity. Spatiotemporally Varying Coefficients (STVC) model is the first Bayesian-based local spatiotemporal regression approach, intending to simultaneously detect spatial and temporal nonstationarity for heterogeneous response-covariate variables relationships, through separately estimating posterior local-scale coefficients over different space areas and time frames. In this paper, we first presented a general Bayesian STVC modelling paradigm as a specification guide to show its commonality in broader geospatial research. Then, we employed it to solve a real-world issue concerning spatiotemporal healthcare-socioeconomic relations, for which we derived data of county-level hospital beds number per capita, as well as data of related socioeconomic factors in northeast China during 2002–2011. Results showed that the STVC model surpassed all the other comparative regressions, in terms of both Bayesian model fitness and predictive ability. Globally, resident savings, financial institutions loans, GDP, and primary industry were identified as key socioeconomic conditions affecting healthcare resources in Northeast China. Temporally, with Time-Coefficients (TC) plots, we found that after 2011, GDP and primary industry would further help improve the overall healthcare level of northeast China. Spatially, with Space-Coefficients (SC) maps, we could directly identify the relative contribution of four socioeconomic covariates' impacts on healthcare within each administrative county. Bayesian STVC model is an essential development and extension of the local regression family for exploring the spatiotemporal heterogeneous variables relationships, especially under Bayesian statistics, as well as GIScience and spatial statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reduction in the CO2 emission intensity (ton per gross domestic product) from a base year to a target year with different rates of reduction in each individual year can yield different cumulative CO2 emissions over time, which could have different effects on the climate. In this paper, an indicator is proposed to measure the extent to which the cumulative CO2 emissions are generated by a specific reduction trajectory of CO2 emission intensity, especially for emerging economies with a relatively higher economic growth rate. The proposed indicator is important for less-developed countries and regions in which economic growth is heavily reliant on energy and in which significant potential exists for improvement of energy efficiency. The indicator is applied to evaluate the CO2 emission reduction performance in China's 12th Five-Year Plan period, and the result is not encouraging, especially when the likely gap between the energy conservation goals and temperature goals is further examined. Mitigation goals should be set by considering not only the performance in the final year, but also the reduction in cumulative emissions over the evaluation period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2015, China joined 190 plus nations at Paris in committing to the goal of limiting the rise in global average temperature to ‘well below’ 2°C. Carbon budget analysis indicates that goal will require not only that the European Union and US reduce their emissions by greater than 80% by 2050, but that China at least comes close to doing so as well, if any budget is to be left over for the rest of the world (RoW). Given that RoW emissions are, and will come from, low-income and emerging nations, China’s emission reduction potential is of no small consequence. In this paper, we use the Kaya identity to back out changes in the drivers of CO2 emissions, including gross domestic product (GDP), energy intensity (E/GDP) and the carbon content of energy (C/E), the latter two calculated to be consistent with China’s long-term GDP growth rate forecasts and specified 2050 CO2 emission reduction targets. Our results suggest that even achieving China’s highly optimistic renewable energy targets will be very far from sufficient to reduce China’s CO2 emissions from 9.1 Gt it emitted in 2015 to much below 3 Gt by 2050. Even reducing its emissions to 5 Gt will be challenging, yet this falls far short of what is needed if the world is to meet its ‘well below’ 2°C commitment. Key policy insights Under the Paris Agreement there is great pressure on China to very substantially reduce its emissions by 2050. While China has attached great importance to renewables and nuclear energy development, even achieving the most optimistic targets would not be sufficient to reduce China’s emissions from 9.1 Gt in 2015 to much below 3 Gt by 2050. China’s emission reduction potential falls far short of what is needed if the world is to meet its Paris ‘well below’ 2°C commitment, even if the EU and US reduce their emissions to zero by 2050. Emission cuts consistent with the Paris Agreement will require that China and the world give much greater weight to advancing research and development of scalable low-, zero- and negative-carbon sources and technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important arguments with which China has sought to develop amicable relations with its neighbours has been the promise of economic benefits. Yet, this paper argues, these gains have remained limited. In spite of limited available data, the paper shows that China’s contribution to the rest of Asia’s GDP has been small and for most neighbours negative. Moreover, China is increasingly impelling those countries into partnerships that look unequal rather than equal. While Beijing has tried to mitigate frustration by promising to rebalance its economy and to create more export opportunities, the paper goes on to reveal that China is in fact readying itself to make another major push for exports itself and to pursue its own open-door policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China’s defence expenditure has been growing rapidly along with GDP growth during the past two decades. Meanwhile, the income gap has continued to increase. There are conflicting views regarding whether the defence expenditure is capable of reducing income inequality. Therefore, this paper investigates the existence of any spillover effect of defence expenditure on income inequality, with a special focus on the regional differences among 31 provinces and 7 military regions in China. We extend panel cointegration and the impulse response function by using panel data during the period of 1997–2012. The empirical results show that the defence expenditure has an impact on income inequality, and the effect varies over different regions in China. The defence expenditure has a spillover effect on income inequality in the full sample panel and the southeastern panel. An increase in the defence expenditure does not crowd out social welfare spending due to the high level of economic development and government expenditure. On the contrary, in the northern panel, the effect is opposite because of the unbalanced economic development levels within the panel. Beijing as the capital of China, benefits more from the expansion of defence expenditure thus widening the income gap. In addition, the impulse response analyses further confirm a stronger effect of the defence expenditure on income inequality in the northern and the southeastern panels over a short period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether military spending is capable of promoting social welfare is currently a controversial issue. The aim of this paper is to investigate how military spending affects the input and output of social welfare (i.e. social welfare expenditures and social welfare index). A panel cointegration analysis and an impulse response function are conducted with multi-country panel data, over two time periods, 1998–2011 and 1993–2007. In addition, to extend a comparative analysis over different economies, BRICS (i.e. Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and G7 (i.e. the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Canada) countries are selected as representatives of emerging economies and developed countries, respectively. The empirical results show that military spending enhances social welfare expenditures in developed countries, while the effect is ambiguous in emerging economies. Also, military spending is capable of promoting the social welfare index based on the FMOLS estimation. The comparative analyses indicate that unlike in the G7, the effect of the growth of military spending on the growth of social welfare expenditures is negative and shorter in the BRICS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the dynamic relationships between GDP, residential property prices, and stock prices in Hong Kong. The study is interesting because most people put their wealth into these two markets. We find that there are long-run feedback effects between the two asset markets, providing evidence of wealth and credit-price effects in Hong Kong. There are also long-run, bi-directional causal links between real GDP and real asset prices. Hence, real asset prices can drive long-run economic growth and vice versa. Finally, the paper discusses what policy lessons can be drawn from the empirical analyses that have been undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Industrial structure evolves with economic development. Since the reform and opening up of the economy in 1978, China has undergone rapid economic growth and dramatic industrial restructuring, with the proportion of the primary, secondary and tertiary industry changed respectively from 28%, 48% and 24% of GDP in 1978 to 11%, 49% and 40% in 2008. Using panel data from 31 provinces in the past three decades, this paper empirically examined the relationship between economic growth and industrial structure. Based on results from unit root test, cointegration test, and Granger causality test, this paper concluded that the two variables are order-1 integrated, short-run economic fluctuation causes industrial structure disproportion, while a long-run bidirectional causal relationship exists between industry structure disproportion and economic aggregate fluctuation. This paper also investigated the determinants of China''s industrial structure and found that influential factors include per capita GDP, domestic consumption propensity, urban–rural disparity, scale of the labor force and capital stock, property right protection, and administrative effectiveness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

As a consequence of the powerful changes that have occurred over the last three decades in the principal 'drivers' of economic change, there have been significant realignments in the global patterns of production and consumption of natural resources, as well as in the intensity of their use, in the quest to raise the level of material wellbeing throughout the world. In this paper, three large energy-consuming (and/or -producing) countries are examined - the USA, China and Russia - and the story of a generation's economic progress (or decline, as the case may be) is seen through the lens of energy consumption - the 'stuff' that fuels a modern 'standard of living'. After presenting data on gross domestic product, population, the observed levels and annual growth rates of consumption and production of three fuel minerals over a 35-year interval ending in 2005 for these countries and for the world, the paper includes a description of these countries' growing import dependence (or, as the case may be, their enhanced or reduced role as an exporter to the world economy) for some, or all, of these critical resources over this time period. These changing trends contribute to one of today's 'front-burner' public policy issues: energy-supply security. The last section of the paper examines the changing 'intensity-of-use' of oil and total energy. The paper concludes with some remarks on the geopolitical/environmental dilemma associated with these energy resources, which is intensifying as we approach the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cross-region water pollution issue has always been the widespread concern around the world. It becomes especially critical for China due to the imbalance relates to environmental costs that have accompanied rapid growth of economy. Though the government makes great efforts to improve it, the potential for water pollution conflict is still great. We consider the problem of determining combined control strategies for China’s cross-region lake pollution based on the environmental green costs. The problem is first formulated as a generalized bilevel mathematical program where the upper level consists in each region that reduces environmental green costs including three parts: the reduction cost, pollution permit trade cost and cost of environment damage, while the lower level is represented by pollution permit equilibrium market. Finally, we take an empirical analysis in Taihu lake. The numerical study shows that the minimum costs of both total and regional are obviously superior to the current processing costs, which provides theoretical basis for the price of emission permits. Implications: Today, China’s rapid gross domestic product (GDP) growth has come at a very high cost, as real estate prices have skyrocketed, the wealth gap has widened, and environmental pollution has worsened. China’s central government is urged to correct the GDP-oriented performance evaluation system that is used to judge administrative region leaders. The cross-region water pollution issue has become a troubling issue that urgently needs to be resolved in China. This paper will not only actively aid efforts to govern Lake Taihu and other cross-region valleys, but it will also provide a supplement for theoretical research on cross-region pollution issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a review of services sector development in China. It is found that China’s services have recently emerged as the dominant contributor to economic growth and job creation. Trade in services has also increased dramatically, although China maintains a huge deficit. In comparison with economies at a similar stage of development, however, China’s services sector is lagging behind. Both GDP and employment shares of the services sector are relatively small. Services trade also accounts for a relatively small share of China’s total trade. In particular, China’s new services are underdeveloped. As per capita income rises and resultant urbanization accelerates, the country’s services sector is expected to expand further and hence play a key role in rebalancing China’s economy away from its over-reliance on manufacturing and exporting. To reach this goal, further reforms and prudent government policies are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the growth trajectory of China and related structural change to assess China's capacity to continue its rapid growth over the next decade. The evidence demonstrates that the multi-path approach undertaken has enabled China to transform its economy from low value-added towards high value-added activities through structural change from low to high value-added industries, as well as upgrading within industries. In doing so, China did not follow the neo-liberal advocacy of freeing markets. Selective state interventions facilitated China's transformation from an agricultural to an industrial economy over the last few decades. Upgrading towards higher value-added activities and the continuing strength of macroeconomic indicators, such as balance of payment and capital account surpluses, and low trade intensity of GDP and debt service along with significant deepening in human capital and R&D activities, suggests that China will continue to grow relatively rapidly over the next decade. To do this China needs to find solutions to growing deficits in power and water supply, and potentially dangerous political upheavals if growing economic inequality problems are not solved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is widely believed that the acceleration of growth since reforms began in 1978 has increased regional disparities in China. This paper examines whether this is the case for GDP per capita, labour productivity and technical efficiency in industry in 30 regions from 1978 to 2005. The unexpected conclusion is that over the whole period, there has been convergence rather than divergence: more backward regions have caught up with leading regions. The process of regional convergence was especially strong from 1978 to 1990. In the 1990s, there was divergence, but convergence resumed after 2000, leaving regional inequalities in 2005 much smaller than in 1978. Possible theoretical and policy explanations for the observed pattern are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human activities can have dramatic effects on the environment so that evaluating the anthropogenic driving forces is an important issue in the consideration of how humans impact the world. In this paper, ecological footprint (EF) was used as an aggregate index of total human impacts in 31 provinces in mainland China during 2010. The STIRPAT model was employed to analyze the major anthropogenic drivers of EF. The empirical results demonstrate that great disparities of EF exist at the spatial scale. Provinces with the largest total EF are mostly distributed in the populated east coast of China, whereas provinces with the lowest total EF are mostly found in west China. Similar to EF, ecological deficit (ED) is a dominant characteristic of most municipal areas in China. The results of STIRPAT show that population has the largest potential effect on the Chinese environment at the provincial scale, followed by EF intensity, affluence, percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) from the industrial sector, age structure, and per capita land area. Urbanization has negative effects on EF disparities, but it is not an inevitable factor in this case. This study is helpful to recognizing the human effects on environment and helps to facilitate the management of sustainable development across China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economists have reached a consensus that central bank can improve their policy efficiency by following a monetary policy rule. Given that money supply is the principal policy instrument of the People's Bank of China (PBC) and its monetary targeting regime, this paper utilizes the counterfactual simulation method to evaluate the feasibility of the McCallum rule as a policy guideline for China in two simple macroeconomic models. The simulation results show that following the McCallum rule could significantly reduce China's nominal GDP fluctuations. The analysis shows that a rule-specified path for monetary base changes could be used as a benchmark for PBC's policy decision. Therefore, we strongly advocate that the PBC adopt the McCallum rule as its policy guideline in future policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are facing considerable challenges resulting from imminent climate change impacts. Urban planning to minimise adverse impacts of climate change at the city level can establish a climate-resilient city. Mitigation strategies to reduce CO2 emissions would lead to a climate-friendly city. Integrating climate change adaptation and mitigation into sustainable city planning should not be merely added as a single level of sustainable city planning, but requires a wide range of multi-level cooperation. Lijiang City has experienced climatic change during the last half century, and its CO2 emissions have increased faster than the GDP growth. Nearby glaciers on Yulong Snow Mountain have been retreating and losing mass since the early twentieth century. In this paper, we identify economic sectors that are vulnerable to climate change, including tourism, agriculture and water supply, and propose mitigation and adaptation strategies to cope with climate change in this tourism city. As energy use is the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, renewable energy has enormous CO2 reduction potential. Land use practices, a sectoral approach and public participation are all considered adaptive in climate planning. The proposals outlined are valuable as they provide an understanding of how to implement integrated climate planning and integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation into sustainable city planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article first argues that states have not balanced against US unipolar power because the potential balancers do not view the United States as a major threat, because they believe it has benign security-seeking motives, at least with regard to other major powers. This explanation runs counter to the Brooks-Wohlforth argument, which holds that states are not balancing because the magnitude of the United States' power advantage makes balancing essentially infeasible. The second part of the paper challenges the conventional wisdom on the benefits of unipolarity, arguing that the benefits the United States derives from unipolarity are generally overrated. More specifically, US security need not be significantly reduced by growth in China's economy that supports a return to bipolarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on industry-level data to analyze the political economy of the use of the antidumping statute by 10 less developed countries (LDCs) against China. Test results suggest that Chinese import competition is an important factor explaining the pattern of LDC antidumping initiation against China. Macroeconomic factors such as gross domestic product growth rate also play some role in influencing the pattern of LDC antidumping determination against China. Importantly, statistical analyses did not yield any evidence suggesting that China's membership in the World Trade Organization has disciplined developing countries' use of the antidumping policy. The paper conjectures that China's Most-Favored-Nation status under the World Trade Organization, the designation of China as a nonmarket economy in antidumping investigations until 2016, and the retaliatory incentives generated by the growing deflection of Chinese exports to developing country markets may have overwhelmed the institutional effect of the trade organization in shaping the pattern of LDC antidumping decision making toward China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade or so, local governments in China have significantly increased their land development activities by acquiring land from farmers and leasing it on a large scale to industrial and commercial developers. This paper is an analysis of how land is used under China's existing institutional background as a competitive incentive for local investment. It is argued that local land development activities have contributed to an investment-driven growth in China that is not sustainable in the long run. On the basis of a panel data covering all provinces from 1998 to 2005, we empirically analyze the impacts of public land leasing on local fiscal revenue and gross domestic product (GDP). Policy implications are drawn with regard to further steps in land reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's GDP has grown in 30 years from $106 billion to $2.4 trillion, making it the fourth largest economy in the world. In 2002 the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pledged an even more ambitious development agenda: quadrupling of GDP, social equality, recovery and protection of environmental integrity. The reconciliation of these three policy goals would be achieved through the establishment of a 'circular economy', underpinned by a cleaner production strategy. Two new laws were introduced to move the agenda forward—the new Environmental Impact Assessment Law and the Cleaner Production Promotion Law. This paper examines the provisions of these laws and published outcomes of actual implementation. The author concludes that while the results achieved thus far are important, the scope and magnitude of environmental benefits are insignificant and the pace of progress too slow to realistically deal with the environmental impacts of the 40 million or so enterprises in China. Some suggestions are offered on how the government can use the Cleaner Production Promotion Law to introduce and sustain the societal- and corporate-level changes that are needed if China is to make significant and timely progress towards a circular economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the relationship between per capita GDP growth and investment, foreign direct investment, labour force growth, government expenditure and urban infrastructure based on the data for 189 large and medium-sized Chinese cities for the period of 1991–98. Cross-sectional analyses indicate that several factors, such as foreign investment, paved roads and government expenditure on science and technology are positively related to per capita GDP growth, while the overall size of government, measured by total government spending share in GDP, appears negatively related to per capita GDP growth. Contrary to the literature on economic growth, total investment share in GDP is insignificantly related to per capita GDP growth. Also, there is no clear evidence of convergence in per capita GDP among Chinese cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]