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Urbanization is a dominant component of social and economic development around the world, but this process creates tremendous pressure on the ecological environment. How to achieve coordination between urbanization and conservation of this environment has become a key issue, especially in developing countries. It is necessary to identify the driving factors that affect this coordination. To identify these factors, we chose 290 Chinese prefecture-level cities to analyze the driving factors behind urbanization using spatial regression analysis, and explored the spatial differences among regions in these factors. Our results show that industrial upgrading and technological progress were the main factors that promoted coordinated development, with industrialization having positive effects under government management, but with differences among regions in how the driving forces affected coordinated development. Using technological progress to promote industrial upgrading, creating new employment to absorb surplus rural labor, and providing workers with skills training so they can take advantage of new jobs can promote win–win solutions that coordinate urbanization with conservation of the ecological environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological restoration and conservation are primary components of sustainable development around the world, particularly during the contemporary era of climate change. However, restoration and conservation are not free; they consume huge amounts of resources that would otherwise support social and economic development. Therefore, excessive conservation creates a risk of creating rather than eliminating poverty. Unfortunately, scientists have largely ignored the balance between these contrasting goals. Here, we discuss the concept of finding the threshold that represents a suitable balance between ecological conservation and economic development, thereby maximizing the benefits for both humans and the environment and promoting sustainable development. To demonstrate the concept, we examined China's ecological restoration achievements and discussed some of the unforeseen negative consequences that accompanied these achievements to discuss how future policies could better balance ecological and socioeconomic goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Desertification affects about 36 × 106 km2 of land around the world, two‐thirds of the world's countries and one‐fifth of its population, but poverty prevents these people from developing effective solutions. To balance the need for sustainable development with environmental protection, China's scientists have tested a new and more environmentally friendly approach based on ecological restoration projects that simultaneously provide a sustainable livelihood for the citizens affected by the projects. This strategy for controlling desertification requires cooperation among governments, scientists, and researchers from many disciplines and the communities affected by the program. To document the effectiveness of this strategy, we monitored the implementation of a programme to combat desertification in the Alxa League of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Our study showed that the new strategy can significantly increase vegetation cover, species richness, aboveground biomass, soil organic matter content, and soil nutrients. The successful ecological restoration provides potentially important lessons for other parts of the world that face the joint burden of poverty and environmental degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's economic and political reforms since 1978 represent one of the biggest institutional changes in the last century. Because most research has focused on the economics of institutional change rather than the evolution of political institutions, a theoretical framework to explain China's rapid economic development is lacking. To understand the successes and failures of China's institutional change, we reviewed China's innovative political and economic practices during the past 30 years. We found that the country's political and economic institutions combine to form a dynamic equilibrium that can explain the impressive economic results. China's leaders dream of new institutions that will improve upon traditional Western capitalism, based on a combination of central planning with traditional capitalist approaches that increase the system's flexibility. If China's leaders can combine this approach with decreased social costs compared with previous socioeconomic systems, this will represent a new era and a model that other nations can follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental Kuznets curve theory predicts that rapid economic development will initially and unavoidably create environmental problems until these problems are solved at higher development levels. However, because different economies face different impacts from economic growth, some may find ways to shorten the environmental Kuznets curve. To understand the characteristics of a “Kuznets curve” based on Chinese environmental attitudes and the factors that influence these attitudes, we interviewed 3000 randomly selected Chinese adults in 2014 using stratified random sampling in six areas (four provinces and two provincial-scale municipalities) that had been affected by the national Grain for Green program. Our goal was to determine their opinions on China’s environmental policy. Based on their responses, we calculated that the minimum value of the environmental Kuznets curve (the income at which priorities change from income to environmental protection) occurred at a per capita income of between 20 200 and 27,000 RMB (an increase of 61.6% compared with results from a similar survey in 2004). We found significant impacts of income, education level, age, gender, employment, and region on Chinese environmental choices. To achieve sustainable socioeconomic development, China’s government must account for how these factors affect public responses to its policy initiatives. China’s government must also find ways to increase personal income faster to speed China’s progress along the environmental Kuznets curve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather than attempting to balance the environment with the economy (i.e., a zero-sum game), a theoretically better long-term approach would be to achieve harmonious development in which both the environment and the economy benefit. To provide insights into this suggestion, we analyzed the relationships between environmental quality and economic development in China through a threshold regression model based on panel data from 292 cities from 2007 to 2018. We found that the relationship between environmental quality and economic development represented a negative interaction before or after the relationship passed through a zone of temporary balance, but that attaining a high urbanization level (in this case study, 81.0%) could improve the efficiency and capital utilization rate of environmental governance and change the impact from negative to positive, thereby achieving harmonious development rather than a zero-sum game. The government should therefore take measures to increase urbanization so as to achieve more harmonious development of the environment and economy (i.e., a win–win situation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutions are effective means by which human societies resolve conflicts over the use of scarce resources and maintain social stability. Institutions evolve as human knowledge improves or as the situation changes. To find suitable principles to guide institutional evolution, we reviewed examples of historical institutional evolution in China to seek guidance for the evolution of other modern institutions. We found that gradualism, win-win paths, stability, neutrality, and cultural diversity are key principles for successful institutional evolution. However, fear of the uncertainty associated with institutional change and changing external conditions will affect the results of institutional change. Designers of new or revised institutions should use publicity and education, combined with gradualism (pilot tests), and measures to ensure neutrality and political stability, to increase acceptance of institutional evolution. In both politics and economics, institutional change can be a long evolutionary process, and it's necessary to balance the changes in political institutions with economic development throughout the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An intriguing feature of China's rapid socioeconomic development during the past 30 years is the new path it appears to represent for other developing countries. Unfortunately, the risks associated with China's model are severe; they include a growing gap between the rich and poor caused by an unbalanced supply of social welfare, environmental degradation caused by unsustainable development, growing risks to food security caused by farmland degradation, damage to China's international reputation, and growing social turbulence as a result of runaway corruption. These problems will jeopardize China's achievements if the current path continues to be pursued without intervention by the central government to solve these problems. To provide insights into the damage being caused by China's socioeconomic development model, we provide examples of problems that have arisen during the current period of reform and that must be avoided by other developing countries that hope to emulate China's rapid development without incurring the same costs. [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]

Highlights: [•] China's unbalanced development strategy seems likely to lead to unsustainable socioeconomic development. [•] Urban development strategy should focus on small and medium cities. [•] Governments must share the benefits of China's economic growth more equally among regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Land degradation and poverty are problems that must be tackled together for environmental conservation to succeed. However, it is rarely possible to move a population from degraded land to another area where the people can be more easily sustained. To find a new strategy that achieves both conservation and economic gains without the need to relocate a population, we examined/investigated a sustainable combination of ecological and economic development suitable for the restoration of areas of China with collapsing gullies, where the frequent steep slopes make restoration difficult. The results showed that the degraded land may contain significant benefits that were previously unappreciated, thereby transforming a problem into an opportunity. Our results suggest that the new approach can both improve the livelihoods of local citizens and promote environmental conservation, leading to successful ecological restoration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Cliff ecosystems are important for biodiversity protection because these sites often support surprisingly ancient and diverse communities, including rare plants and lichens, trees, birds, and small mammals. To protect Chinese cliff ecosystems, an ancient cliff road construction technique is now being used. To understand the environmental benefits of this approach, we monitored eight cliff road sites in the warm Shennongjia region of China''s Hubei Province from June 2006 to July 2009 during road construction. Compared with the traditional filling in of roadside slopes or bridge construction formerly used for highway construction in this area, the cliff highway technique, which combines cantilevered slab roads along the edge of the cliff with bridge support structures where additional support is required, reduces environmental damage and represents a good option for the conservation of fragile cliff ecosystems, while greatly reducing the construction cost. In such areas, the basic objectives of road construction must include biodiversity protection and careful control of the construction process and subsequent cleanup of the site, which cannot be ignored as a result of concentrating on the goal of using the roads to promote regional economic and tourism development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: There are many factors have contributed to China''s environmental crisis and are hindering environmental recovery campaigns. In particular, the implementation of government policy has played a strong role, both because of a government''s natural slowness to change and because of structural impediments. Competition for a share of the huge investments that are being made to support environmental protection among various governmental departments and with local governments has also slowed progress. The conflicting socioeconomic policies that can result from this competition have undermined the large investments in environmental programs by failing to consider the environmental consequences of the conflicts, leading to inappropriate actions and compromising the ability to achieve environmental restoration goals. To improve governance and the ability to meet environmental goals, governments at all levels must understand the problem created by the competition that leads to weak coordination of efforts and must formulate revised policies that encourage sustainability by balancing economic growth with a careful consideration of the need for all groups, whether governmental or private sector, to benefit from these policies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Safeguarding food security is one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. When food production reaches its technological peak, a shortage of arable land will be the key factor that limits food production. Thus, how to increase the area of arable land without ecological damage is a problem faced by the whole world. China is the world's most populous country and a traditional agricultural country. Under the pressure of rapid socioeconomic development, China has taken measures to protect its cultivated land from environmental degradation and protect its food security. By reviewing the research literature, we found several ways to increase the area of arable land while protecting this land from damage. We found that natural resources such as marginal and degraded lands could potentially be converted into arable land while still protecting the ecological environment. However, implementation of such a strategy must account for each region's unique ecological and socioeconomic conditions, and will require both support from appropriate policies and ongoing monitoring and support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "resource curse", in which abundant natural riches tend to frustrate rather than promote economic growth, has been widely accepted by scholars since the 1990s. However, explanations of this phenomenon have not been compelling because developing and developed countries with rich resources coexist. To provide insights into this curse, we calculated the total amount of three different categories of resources for 31 Chinese provinces, and analyzed the relationship between the abundance of these resources and the provincial economic level. The results showed large variations in per capita abundance of resources for a given level of per capita income, suggesting that abundance alone could not explain economic development. The total and net resource abundance per unit area were significantly positively related to per capita income, but the relationship was not significant for these variables based on the per capita abundance. However, we found that the per capita income was significantly correlated with nine economic and social factors: per capita foreign trade, domestic trade, investment, and finances; the transportation infrastructure; and the proportions of employment, college graduates, non-governmental employment, and urbanization. This suggests that the abundance of natural resources is not the primary factor responsible for differences in economic development among the regions and that there is no overall resource curse in China. Instead, implementing appropriate economic policy and maintaining social stability appear to be the primary drivers of social and economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]