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Background: China now faces an increasingly aging society which may exert economic pressure in the long run. This study illustrates the spatial pattern and evolution of population aging and economic development in China. The coupling coordination degree of population aging and economic development at the national and provincial levels are calculated and demonstrated, and the spatial patterns and characteristics are investigated. Methods: This paper presents a coupling analysis of the elderly population rate (EPR) and per capita Gross Regional Product (GRPpc) in China by using the coupling and coordination model. Further, the spatial pattern and evolution of population aging and economic development are investigated based on the standard deviational ellipse. The collected data is at the level of provincial administrative units in mainland China covering the period 2002 to 2020. Results: The results reveal the spatial difference in the coupling and coordination degree between EPR and GRPpc across provinces. The eastern coastal areas are higher than the central and western regions of China. The orientation and directions of EPR are more than GRPpc, indicating that the polarization in population aging is more severe than economic development. Significant positive correlations between coupling coordination degree and sustainable competitiveness are detected. Conclusions: Policymakers should fully consider regional differences and sustainable development in policy formulation of China. The western and northeastern provinces should be given priority in the regional sustainable development plan. At the same time, the coordination between population aging and economic development also requires to be examined especially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While promoting the economic growth, energy has also brought pollution problems to the world environment, which has gradually become a bottleneck impeding sustainable economic development. In view of the rapid evolution of urbanization and industrialization, economic growth is increasingly dependent on the energy consumption, the development of the two is difficult to coordinate, and the internal contradictions are becoming increasingly serious, which hinders the sustainable development of economic growth. This study establishes the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth according to the energy Kuznets curve and studies the future trend of China's sustainable development through the comparative analysis of the energy Kuznets curve of the United States and Germany. The results show that, at the turning point of energy consumption, China's energy economic rate is higher than that of Germany and the United States. In addition, in terms of urbanization rate and industrial structure, although China's tertiary industry has made a breakthrough, it is still lower than that of the United States and Germany, but the level of urbanization rate has made significant progress. In short, China has obvious advantages in future economic development and has a late developing advantage compared with the United States and Germany. This paper makes an empirical analysis of the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in OECD countries and finds out the turning point of energy consumption, so as to provide a theoretical basis for coordinating China's energy consumption and economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have long been calls from industry for guidance in implementing strategies for sustainable development. The Circular Economy represents the most recent attempt to conceptualize the integration of economic activity and environmental wellbeing in a sustainable way. This set of ideas has been adopted by China as the basis of their economic development (included in both the 11th and the 12th 'Five Year Plan'), escalating the concept in minds of western policymakers and NGOs. This paper traces the conceptualisations and origins of the Circular Economy, tracing its meanings, and exploring its antecedents in economics and ecology, and discusses how the Circular Economy has been operationalized in business and policy. The paper finds that while the Circular Economy places emphasis on the redesign of processes and cycling of materials, which may contribute to more sustainable business models, it also encapsulates tensions and limitations. These include an absence of the social dimension inherent in sustainable development that limits its ethical dimensions, and some unintended consequences. This leads us to propose a revised definition of the Circular Economy as 'an economic model wherein planning, resourcing, procurement, production and reprocessing are designed and managed, as both process and output, to maximize ecosystem functioning and human well-being'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses income accounting techniques to assess, counterfactually, the implied impact over the last 10 years of a hypothetical government policy to constrain investment growth in order to raise the share of consumption in GDP and to bring about a balance on current account. We find that both target variables are very sensitive to changes in investment and that a policy of careful reform is called for. In the light of this finding, we review Chinese government policy pronouncements and activity with a view to assessing their appropriateness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With green development becoming a global movement, environmental tax has been adopted by many governments to promote green development. This study analyzes the impact of environmental tax on green development by using a four-dimension dynamical system. The establishment of the system is based on the complex and dynamic interactions among economic development, pollution emissions, resources consumption, and environmental tax, where roles of environmental tax are reflected by the linear parameters. A theoretic analysis shows the complexity of the behavior of the system. Mainly, the existence of chaos is inferred by Lyapunov exponent spectrum and bifurcation diagram, then verified by the presence of a chaotic attractor. An empirical study of the green development dynamical system in China demonstrates the particular evolution paths of economic growth, pollution intensity, and resource intensity under different environmental tax parameters. Results indicate a robust beneficial role of environmental tax on green development. Furthermore, when an environmental tax is imposed, a firm government control, an active consumer awareness, an advanced technology level can stimulate economic growth, decrease pollution intensity, and control the resource intensity. But the government control has a stronger effect. This study provides a viable and promising approach to analyze the role of imposing an environmental tax on green development and may have potential application in other areas and countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the possibility of China falling into the so-called middle income trap in terms of three checkpoints: innovation capability, world-class big businesses, and inequality. Based on these criteria, our conclusions are as follows: First, China has increasingly become innovative and thus differs from other middle income countries. Second, China has many successful big businesses, a number disproportionate to its size. Thus, China differs from other middle income countries with few world-class big businesses, and the only qualification is that those big businesses are mostly non-manufacturing firms focused on such areas as finance, energy, and trading. Third, China faces great uncertainty in terms of inequality. Although several signs show that the Kuznets curve will come to represent China, as noted by the gradual reduction of surplus labor and rising wage rates starting in the coastal provinces, the Chinese are now facing new sources of inequality in China, such as wealth (including financial and real estate assets) and non-economic factors (including corruption). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "middle income trap" is a significant theoretical and practical issue closely related to the economic and social transition and sustainable development of a country. This paper explores the essence of the "middle income trap" and ways to avoid it. It reveals that the inner nature of the "middle income trap" lies in the institutional transition dilemma, which results essentially from a lack of reasonable and clear definitions of governance boundaries between government and market as well as government and society. This lack of boundaries causes coexistent and interrelated government inefficiency, market distortion/failure and social anomie, leading to a stagnant transition from a factor-driven to an efficiency-driven and further innovation-driven economy. Moreover, this paper proposes that the proper way to avoid the "trap" can be found in the reconstruction of the state governance mode, that is, to transition from a development-oriented and omnipotent government to a public service-oriented and limited government, from factor-driven to efficiency-driven and further innovation-driven development, and from a traditional society to a modem civil society through defining reasonable and clear boundaries between government and market as well as government and society. Thus, reconstruction can establish a state public governance mode featuring the interactive role of government, market and society, and achieve the modernization of state governance systems and capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, both direct material input (DMI) and domestic processed output (DPO) of Jilin Province in 1990–2006 were calculated and then based on these two indexes, a dematerialization model was established. The main results are summarized as follows: (1) both direct material input and domestic processed output increase at a steady rate during 1990–2006, with average annual growth rates of 4.19% and 2.77%, respectively. (2) The average contribution rate of material input to economic growth is 44%, indicating that the economic growth is visibly extensive. (3) During the studied period, accumulative quantity of material input dematerialization is 11,543 × 104 t and quantity of waste dematerialization is 5,987 ×104 t. Moreover, dematerialization gaps are positive, suggesting that the potential of dematerialization has been well fulfilled. (4) In most years of the analyzed period, especially 2003–2006, the economic system of Jilin Province represents an unsustainable state. The accelerated economic growth relies mostly on excessive resources consumption after the Revitalization Strategy of Northeast China was launched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from WDI show that developing countries are easily caught in the "middle income trap." To interpret the mechanism of the "middle income trap," this paper focuses on: (1) Based on the empirical framework of economic growth, we perform an empirical research on the determinants of economic growth at different income levels and discover that fixed capital investment, FDI and human capital accumulation are the main factors influencing less developed economies while for the upper middle income level and high-income level countries, the engines of economic growth change to institutions and R&D. (2) We discuss the possible reasons why developing countries can have rapid economic growth before reaching the middleincome level, but cannot transform growth mechanisms in the middle income level. (3) We classify the factors that have influenced China's economic growth since the reform and analyze the potential ones for China's future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China environmental pollution brought by economic development is so severe that 16 of 20 most polluted cities on the earth are here in mainland. It is of great essence and need to evaluate China's environment pollution level objectively to promote China's economic development sound and fast. This paper is based on the measurement of pollution index in China from 1999 to 2009, aiming at setting up an environment pollution model to explore the effects of trade openness, FDI, government rules, industry structure, capital deepening, and paths dependence on pollution index. Regression analysis indicates that FDI, economy development level, and pollution paths dependence have obvious positive impact on pollution index, that the tertiary industry proportion has obvious negative impact on pollution index in most of regions, and that capital deepening has obvious positive impact on pollution index in most regions. Though trade openness improves the east-region environmental quality and aggravates the middle-west environment pollution, environment rules have little obvious positive impact on environmental quality. However, technology progress has obvious positive impact on environmental quality in the middle east, but has little positive impact on the environmental quality in the west region. In order to promote the economy sustainable development, China should therefore increase foreign investment access environment threshold, optimize the construction of industry, implement green trade strategy, and perfect the environment systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's rise as a global economic power in recent decades has been achieved with tremendous environmental costs. Has China been an abnormally heavier polluter in its development path? How has pollution accounted for China's hyper economic growth? This study answers these questions by evaluating the environmental effects of China's growth using a data set of 61 countries over a period of four decades. The analysis is focused on two pollutant emissions: CO2 emissions, which carry global externalities, and particulate emissions, of which the environmental cost is more domestic. A fractional polynomial (FP) regression model is estimated to project emissions levels per worker based on lagged values of per capita GDP and other variables. It reveals that China's CO2 emissions have been higher than the projection for most years with an average margin of over 5.3% while its particulate emissions have exceeded projection by an average margin of more than 7.5%. The excessive emissions levels of both pollutants confirm the severity of China's environmental challenges and indicate great potential for the economy to work for a greener growth pattern. On the other hand, contributions of emissions to multi-factor productivity (MFP) growth are estimated by FP regressions based on a human-capital augmented growth model. The results show opposing trends of CO2 and particulates in their "contributions" to GDP growth, which imply asymmetric incentives to abate the two types of pollution. These findings have important implications for China's environmental policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world's economic system and ecosystem have everything to gain by teasing apart the issues related to infrastructure and climate change in China. If China is to sustain its economic growth and improve its living standards over the next several decades, huge sums of capital will be needed to finance green infrastructure in energy and water. While cooperative approaches between government and the private sector are necessary, global capital markets can vet infrastructure projects and technologies to finance green infrastructure. The BOT and PPP approaches to financing infrastructure projects in China, based on "contract finance," have serious shortcomings. A more modern approach, based on "market finance," can raise the capital required for green infrastructure projects without creating undesirable consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on land use planning topics, including "Historical Amnesia: New Urbanism and the City of Tomorrow," "More Than Sector Theory: Homer Hoyt's Contributions to Planning Knowledge" and "Methodology for the Survival Analysis of Urban Building Stocks."