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On the economic side, China has attained rapid development; yet, the ecological aspects pose threats to its sustainable development. The nexus between economic growth, natural resources, human capital, and financial development has an important inference for the environment, and therefore, this endeavor examines the influence of said variables on the ecological footprint in China via adopting the novel dynamic simulated ARDL approach by utilizing the data from 1985 to 2018. The outcomes of the analysis confirm that natural resources and financial development have a considerable positive short- and long-run relation with the ecological footprint. Besides, this depicts that natural resources and financial development lead to an upsurge in ecological footprint in China. Furthermore, human capital also upsurges the negative influence on the environment. Economic growth also upsurges the ecological footprint; however, the outcomes also yielded an interesting insight lending credence to the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve in China. So, it is important to offer awareness sessions to the community as well as to human resources working in different sectors regarding the significance of sustainability by giving training related to the reduction of the excessive consumption of scarce resources. Moreover, a watchful deliberation must be given while implementing strategies about sustainability concerning the specified factors and their potential impact on ecological footprints so that the targets of Sustainable Development Goals 7, 8, and 13 could be accomplished by the Chinese economy., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)