scholarly journals Research on the Impact of Technology Innovation on Quantity and Quality of Economic Growth in the Yangtze River Delta of China: A Comparative Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. 1455-1464
Author(s):  
Jialei Cao ◽  
Chenran Ge

High-quality economic development (HQED) has recently become a crucial sustainable growth mode in China, which pursues economic growth while maintaining social equity and green ecology. The HQED of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) has played an exemplary role in achieving the leap from “China speed” to “China Quality”. In this paper, we first use the entropy-weight multidimensional comprehensive evaluation method to calculate the HQED index as a proxy for the quality of economic growth. Then, using panel data of 41 cities in the YRD, we conduct a comparative study to examine impacts of technological innovation (TI) on quantity and quality of economic growth by employing different panel estimation models over the period 2009-2019 and check the robustness in five ways. Finally, this paper investigates the TI-economic growth link based on the panel quantile regression across the conditional distributions of economic growth levels. Results show that TI has significantly positive effects in terms of both quantity and quality of economic growth, and the promoting effect on the quantity of economic growth is almost four times higher than that of quality under mean estimations by double fixed-effects. The effect on quantity of economic growth is also stronger than that of quality under the conditional distribution, and TI has a stronger impact for regions with higher levels of economic growth.

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 923
Author(s):  
Fengsong Pei ◽  
Rui Zhong ◽  
Li-An Liu ◽  
Yingjuan Qiao

Carbon footprint is emerging as an effective tool for carbon emission management, especially that from fossil energy consumption. In addition, decoupling analysis is important to keep a high pace of economic growth while reducing carbon emission and its carbon footprint. Taking the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) urban agglomeration in China as a case, this paper examined the changes in carbon footprint and carbon footprint pressure by incorporating land resource limits. On this basis, we further analyzed the decoupling relationships between carbon footprint, carbon footprint pressure and economic growth. The GeoDetector was also employed to detect the spatial heterogeneity of the carbon footprint pressure. The results showed that despite the decrease of carbon emissions from 2011 to 2019 in the YRD, carbon footprint pressure still revealed an increased trend in this period. As to the decoupling relationships between carbon footprint, carbon footprint pressure and economic growth, they were improved in most of the cities in the YRD, changing from expansive coupling to weak decoupling to strong decoupling. However, the descending trend of decoupling elasticity coefficient for carbon footprint pressure is smaller than that of the carbon footprint. This result could be explained by the fact that not only carbon emission but also carbon sequestration (by productive lands including forests and grasslands) pose large impacts on carbon footprint pressure. The findings indicate the necessity not only to reduce carbon emission, but also to protect productive lands to realize low carbon economy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 7872
Author(s):  
Yijia Huang ◽  
Jiaqi Zhang ◽  
Jinqun Wu

Rapid urbanization has led to a growing number of environmental challenges in large parts of China, where the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) urban agglomerations serve as a typical example. To evaluate the relationship between environmental sustainability gaps and urbanization in 26 cities of the YRD, this study revisited the environmental sustainability assessment (ESA) by combining the metrics of environmental footprints and planetary boundaries at the city level, and then integrated the footprint-boundary ESA framework into decoupling analysis. The results demonstrated considerable spatiotemporal heterogeneity in the environmental sustainability of water use, land use, carbon emissions, nitrogen emissions, phosphorus emissions and PM2.5 emissions across the YRD cities during the study period 2007–2017. Decoupling analysis revealed a positive sign that more than half of the 26 cities had achieved the decoupling of each category of environmental sustainability gaps from urbanization since 2014, especially for nitrogen and phosphorus emissions. On the basis of ESA and decoupling analysis, all the cities were categorized into six patterns, for which the optimal pathways towards sustainable development were discussed in depth. Our study will assist policy makers in formulating more tangible and differentiated policies to achieve decoupling between environmental sustainability gaps and urbanization.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Shu ◽  
Min Xie ◽  
Tijian Wang ◽  
Pulong Chen ◽  
Yong Han ◽  
...  

Abstract. Severe high ozone (O3) episodes usually have close relations to synoptic systems. A regional continuous O3 pollution episode is detected over the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region in China during August 7–12, 2013, in which the O3 concentrations in more than half of the cities exceeding the national air quality standard. The maximum hourly concentration of O3 reaches 167.1 ppb. By means of the observational analysis and the WRF/CMAQ numerical simulation, the characteristics and the essential impact factors of the typical regional O3 pollution is integratedly investigated. The observational analysis shows that the atmospheric subsidence dominated by Western Pacific subtropical high plays a crucial role in the formation of high-level O3. The favorable weather conditions, such as extremely high temperature, low relative humidity and weak wind speed, caused by the abnormal strong subtropical high are responsible for the trapping and the chemical production of O3 in the boundary layer. In addition, when the YRD cities at the front of Typhoon Utor, the periphery circulation of typhoon system can enhance the downward airflows and cause worse air pollution. But when the typhoon system weakens the subtropical high, the prevailing southeasterly surface wind leads to the mitigation of the O3 pollution. The Integrated Process Rate (IPR) analysis incorporated in CMAQ is applied to further illustrate the combined influence of subtropical high and typhoon system in this O3 episode. The results show that the vertical diffusion (VDIF) and the gas-phase chemistry (CHEM) are two major contributors to O3 formation. During the episode, the contributions of VDIF and CHEM to O3 maintain the high values over 10 ppb/h in Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Nanjing. On August 10–11, the cities close to the sea are apparently affected by the typhoon system, with the contribution of VDIF increasing to 28.45 ppb/h in Shanghai and 19.76 ppb/h in Hangzhou. When the YRD region is under the control of the typhoon system, the contribution values of all individual processes decrease to a low level in all cities. These results provide an insight for the O3 pollution synthetically impacted by the Western Pacific subtropical high and the tropical cyclone system.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 21507-21540
Author(s):  
X. Fu ◽  
S. X. Wang ◽  
Z. Cheng ◽  
J. Xing ◽  
B. Zhao ◽  
...  

Abstract. During 1 to 6 May 2011, a dust event was observed in the Yangtze River Delta region (YRD). The highest PM10 concentration reached over 1000 μg m−3 and the visibility was below 3 km. In this study, the Community Multi-scale Air Quality modeling system (CMAQ5.0) coupled with an in-line windblown dust model was used to simulate the formation, spatial and temporal characteristics of this dust event, and analyze its impacts on deposition and photochemistry. The threshold friction velocity for loose smooth surface in the dust model was revised based on Chinese data to improve the model performance. The comparison between predictions and observations indicates the revised model can reproduce the transport and pollution of the event. The simulation results show that the dust event was affected by formation and transport of Mongolian cyclone and cold air. Totally about 695 kt dust particles (PM10) were emitted in Xinjiang Province and Mongolia during 28 to 30 April, the dust band swept northern, eastern China and then arrived in the YRD region on 1 May 2011. The transported dust particles increased the mean surface layer concentrations of PM10 in the YRD region by 372% during 1 to 6 May and the impacts weakened from north to south due to the removal of dust particles along the path. Accompanied by high PM concentration, the dry deposition, wet deposition and total deposition of PM10 in the YRD reached 184.7 kt, 172.6 kt and 357.32 kt, respectively. These deposited particles are very harmful because of their impacts on urban environment as well as air quality and human health when resuspending in the atmosphere. Due to the impacts of mineral dust on atmospheric photolysis, the concentrations of O3 and OH were reduced by 1.5% and 3.1% in the whole China, and by 9.4% and 12.1% in the YRD region, respectively. The work of this manuscript is meaningful for understanding the dust emissions in China as well as for the application of CMAQ in Asia. It is also helpful to understand the formation mechanism and impacts of dust pollution in the YRD.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Ye ◽  
Lingqian Hu

An outbreak of atypical pneumonia, now called COVID-19 and known to be caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, first detected in Wuhan, Hubei Province of the People’s Republic of China in December 2019 and afterwards rapidly spread worldwide. Wuhan and the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region implemented first-level public health emergency responses to stop the spread of the virus on January 23rd, 2020. We tracked the geographical gravity centre of the disease and calculated spatial autocorrelation to explore the spatiotemporal patterns of distribution of imported and locally disseminated COVID-19 cases under the emergency-response control measure. We also applied polynomial regression analysis to estimate the trend of the COVID-19 in the YRD region before and after the control activities against the spread of the infection were instituted. The results show that the control measures applied have been effective. And, in the YRD region, areas with a large influx of population flow from Wuhan and Hubei Province had high risks of COVID-19. Therefore, identification of the spatiotemporal trends should be the first step when developing effective policies to manage and control any new epidemic. The results are not only informative locally but also useful for the rest of the world.


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