Bureaucracy Meets the Environment: Elite Perceptions in Six Chinese Cities

2007 ◽  
Vol 189 ◽  
pp. 100-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanqi Tong
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Chinese Cities ◽  
Specific Policy ◽  
Development Level ◽  
Environmental Protection Policies ◽  
The Cost

A survey of local government officials and enterprise managers in six Chinese cities demonstrates relatively high environmental awareness. However, this awareness remains primarily an abstraction and does not always shape specific policy preferences. This article shows that the development-driven model works well overall, indicating the reluctance of policy makers to implement environmental protection policies at the cost of sacrificing the rate of economic growth. The pollution-driven model applies only to more developed areas, in which elites in more polluted cities are more concerned about environmental protection than those in less polluted cities. A non-linear model that takes into account the interaction between pollution and development works the best in explaining elites' policy preferences. It suggests that pollution becomes a significant factor affecting policy preferences only when a certain development level is reached.

scholarly journals Is Urban Sprawl Decoupled from the Quality of Economic Growth? Evidence from Chinese Cities

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinhai Lu ◽  
Danling Chen ◽  
Yue Wang
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Urban Sprawl ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
National Level ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Chinese Cities ◽  
Technological Efficiency ◽  
Spatial Differences

This paper investigates how urban sprawl and the quality of economic growth interact and further studies the spatial-temporal decoupling characteristics of both. To achieve this, a framework was developed to better explain both the different dimensional effects urban sprawl exerts on the quality of economic growth and their reverse feedback relation. A sample of 285 Chinese cities (2003 to 2016) were analyzed, employing both a decoupling model and spatial correlation analysis. The findings indicated that urban sprawl and the quality of economic growth are related via scale, structure, technological efficiency, and technological progress effects. In practice, with increasing quality of economic growth, the urban sprawl index decreases at the national level. At prefecture-city level, the types of decoupling between urban sprawl and the quality of economic growth showed clear periodical and unbalanced characteristics. Furthermore, decoupling showed a significant agglomeration effect in Chinese cities, which is mainly mediated by the types High-High and Low-Low. This study provides a significant contribution to the relevant acknowledge system by providing a comprehensive theoretical framework toward an understanding of how urban expansion interacts with the quality of economic growth. Furthermore, their decoupling types and spatial differences that are critical for the urban sustainable development have been identified, thus providing several important insights for both academics and urban policy makers.

scholarly journals The Effect of Social Capital on Environmental Pollution in China—Suppression or Promotion?

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (24) ◽  
pp. 9459
Author(s):  
Yuxin Wang ◽  
Jinping Xiong ◽  
Wenlong Li ◽  
Ming Na ◽  
Mei Yao
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Environmental Pollution ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Suppression Effect ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Pollution Emissions ◽  
And Control

The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly regards the prevention and control of environmental pollution as one of the “three key battles” to build a well-off society. This paper analyzes the relationship between social capital and environmental pollution from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. From the theoretical perspective, social capital has two opposite effects on environmental pollution: the suppression and the promotion. The former indicates that the improvement of social capital level reduces the cost of residents’ boycott to pollution and reduces pollution emissions, while the latter manifests that the improvement of social capital worsens environmental pollution due to the ability of polluting enterprises to withstand residents’ boycott. Based on the panel data of China from 2008 to 2016, the empirical results show that social capital has inverted U-shaped characteristics on environmental pollution. Low level of social capital will increase pollution emissions and only when social capital reaches a certain level can it be beneficial to environmental protection. This paper attempts to better understand the functions of social capital in environmental governance and provides constructive proposals on how to exert the governance role of social capital on environmental protection for policy makers. Regions with higher levels of social capital should exert the suppression effect of social capital and regions with low levels should focus on improving the level of social capital, while formal regulation means shall be adopted to control pollution.

Research on the Relationship between Economy Growth and Environmental Pollution in Shandong Province - The Empirical Research from 1981-2009

2012 ◽  
Vol 524-527 ◽  
pp. 3433-3437
Author(s):  
Lei Ming Li ◽  
Bing Quan Liu
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Environmental Pollution ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Shandong Province ◽  
Kuznets Curve ◽  
Related Data ◽  
The Government ◽  
Environmental Protection Policies ◽  
The Relationship

Recently, the problem of environmental pollution has become the main obstacle that restricts the regional economic development. Shandong is an economically strong province of China. The government of Shandong must pay attention to the relationship between economic growth and environmental protection, if we want to achieve the sustainable economic development and build a harmonious society better and faster. This article is based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis. We have collected the GDP per capita and three types of waste emissions of 1981-2009 in Shandong province related data. Then we found the relationship between the economic growth and various pollutants by using regression analysis method, so as to provide the government with theoretical guidance for formulating environmental protection policies.

Inter-country inequality as a dynamic process and the problem of post-industrial development

2018 ◽  
pp. 5-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. M. Grigoryev ◽  
V. A. Pavlyushina
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Modern World ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Development Level ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Post Industrial

The phenomenon of economic growth is studied by economists and statisticians in various aspects for a long time. Economic theory is devoted to assessing factors of growth in the tradition of R. Solow, R. Barrow, W. Easterly and others. During the last quarter of the century, however, the institutionalists, namely D. North, D. Wallis, B. Weingast as well as D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson, have shown the complexity of the problem of development on the part of socioeconomic and political institutions. As a result, solving the problem of how economic growth affects inequality between countries has proved extremely difficult. The modern world is very diverse in terms of development level, and the article offers a new approach to the formation of the idea of stylized facts using cluster analysis. The existing statistics allows to estimate on a unified basis the level of GDP production by 174 countries of the world for 1992—2016. The article presents a structured picture of the world: the distribution of countries in seven clusters, different in levels of development. During the period under review, there was a strong per capita GDP growth in PPP in the middle of the distribution, poverty in various countries declined markedly. At the same time, in 1992—2016, the difference increased not only between rich and poor groups of countries, but also between clusters.

Globalization, Poverty, Environmental Degradation and Economic Growth Nexus: Empirical Analysis of SAARC Regions

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adiqa Kiani ◽  
Ejaz Ullah ◽  
Khair Muhammad
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Significant Negative Relationship ◽  
The Impact

The main objective of this study is to investigate the impact of poverty, globalization, and environmental degradation on economic growth in the selected SAARC countries. This study is employed panel Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) technique for empirical analysis using selected SAARC regions including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka over the period of 1980 to 2018. Globalization impacts economic growth positively and significantly.  In addition to this the significant negative relationship is found between population and economic growth. The results show that poverty is positively related with environmental degradation. Furthermore, the results indicate that globalization is positively and significantly associated with environmental degradation in the SAARC region. Finally, the results show that urbanization is positive and significantly associated with environmental degradation, which could be the serious concerns for the policy makers to control.

scholarly journals What We Talk about When We Talk about Poverty: Culture and Welfare State Development in Britain, Denmark and France

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Cathie Martin ◽  
Tom Chevalier
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
National Level ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Welfare State Development ◽  
Political Agents ◽  
Cross National

Why did historical anti-poverty programs in Britain, Denmark and France differ so dramatically in their goals, beneficiaries and agents for addressing poverty? Different cultural views of poverty contributed to how policy makers envisioned anti-poverty reforms. Danish elites articulated social investments in peasants as necessary to economic growth, political stability and societal strength. British elites viewed the lower classes as a challenge to these goals. The French perceived the poor as an opportunity for Christian charity. Fiction writers are overlooked political agents who engage in policy struggles. Collectively, writers contribute to a country's distinctive ‘cultural constraint’, or symbols and narratives, which appears in the national-level aggregation of literature. To assess cross-national variations in cultural depictions of poverty, this article uses historical case studies and quantitative textual analyses of 562 British, 521 Danish and 498 French fictional works from 1770 to 1920.

scholarly journals What is beyond the edges? Gated communities and their role in China’s desire for harmonious cities

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Badiaa Hamama ◽  
Jian Liu
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Gated Communities ◽  
Urban Fabric ◽  
Chinese Cities ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Process Of Urbanization ◽  
New Urbanization

Abstract During the rapid process of urbanization in post-reform China, cities assumed the role of a catalyst for economic growth and quantitative construction. In this context, territorially bounded and well delimited urban cells, globally known as ‘gated communities’, xiaoqu, continued to define the very essence of Chinese cities becoming the most attractive urban form for city planners, real estate developers, and citizens alike. Considering the guidelines in China’s National New Urbanization Plan (2014–2020), focusing on the promotion of humanistic and harmonious cities, in addition to the directive of 2016 by China’s Central Urban Work Conference to open up the gates and ban the construction of new enclosed residential compounds, this paper raises the following questions: As the matrix of the Chinese urban fabric, what would be the role of the gated communities in China’s desire for a human-qualitative urbanism? And How to rethink the gated communities to meet the new urban challenges? Seeking alternative perspectives, this paper looks at the gated communities beyond the apparent limits they seem to represent, considering them not simply as the ‘cancer’ of Chinese cities, rather the container of the primary ingredients to reshape the urban fabric dominated by the gate.

scholarly journals The Convergence of Sulphur Dioxide (SO2) Emissions Per Capita in China

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1781
Author(s):  
Yu-Chen Zhang ◽  
Deng-Kui Si ◽  
Bing Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Sulfur Dioxide ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Unit Root ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Unit Root Test ◽  
External Pressure ◽  
So2 Emissions ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
The Government ◽  
Environmental Protection Policies

As the third-largest SO2 emitter in the world, China is facing mounting domestic and external pressure to tackle the increasingly serious SO2 pollution. Figuring out the convergence and persistence of sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions matters much for environmental policymakers in China. This study mainly utilizes the Fourier quantile unit root test to survey the convergence of the SO2 emissions per capita in 74 cities of China during the period of December 2014 to June 2019, by conducting five traditional unit root tests and a quantile root unit test as a comparative analysis. The empirical results indicate that the SO2 emissions per capita in 72 out of 74 cities in China are convergent in the sample period. The results also suggest that the unit root behavior of the SO2 emissions per capita in these cities is asymmetrically persistent at different quantiles. For the cities with the convergent SO2 emissions, the government should consider the asymmetric mean-reverting pattern of SO2 emissions when implementing environmental protection policies at different stages. For Hefei and Nanjing, the local governments need to enact stricter environmental protection policies to control the emission of sulfur dioxide.

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