The Impact Of Economic Growth Target Constraints On Carbon Emissions And Its Mechanism

Since the "14th Five-Year Plan" period,China actively promoted high-quality economic development,and promoting green and low-carbon development was the key link to achieve high-quality development."High carbon" threatens public health and restricts the sustainable development of the economy.Report to the 20 th CPC National Congress pointed out that "we should speed up green development and the construction of a beautiful China and actively and steadily promote peak carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality".The 2023 government work report also further stressed the need to "co-ordinate the safe and stable supply of energy and green and low-carbon development,and promote peak carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality in a scientific and orderly manner".Therefore,how to achieve emission reduction and carbon reduction,achieve the goal of "double carbon" and win-win economic development has become an important topic of academic research.In view of the current situation of economic development in China,it is very important to incorporate environmental factors into the assessment mechanism while abandoning the traditional industrial growth model.How the economic growth target constraint affects the "low carbon" governance has become the focus of this study.Under the background of the "double carbon" target and the new economic normal,this paper combines theoretical analysis with empirical analysis,using 2,735 districts and counties in China from 2004 to 2017 as research samples,to systematically investigate the impact of economic growth target constraints on carbon emissions and its mechanism,and to provide new ideas for the realization of low-carbon development.The study found that:(1)the constraint of economic growth target significantly increased the regional carbon emissions,and the corresponding robustness test also supported this conclusion,and this effect gradually weakened with the passage of time.(2)The impact of economic growth targets on carbon emissions has regional and timing heterogeneity,and the promotion effect on the increase of carbon emissions in the central region is the strongest,followed by the western region;The "pre-emptive" government,which sets economic growth targets ahead of the provinces in which it is located,will be more inclined to adopt an extensive development approach that sacrifices the environment for economic growth.(3)Overcoming the economic growth targets will aggravate carbon emissions,and regions that adopt soft constraints such as "up and down" and "interval" to set economic growth targets and meet the economic growth targets will significantly reduce carbon emissions.(4)The mechanism test shows that the economic growth target constraint aggravates the carbon emission mainly by hindering the technological progress,inhibiting the upgrading of industrial structure and weakening the environmental regulation.Compared with the existing literature,the possible innovations of this paper are as follows:(1)From the perspective of research,this paper studies the influencing factors of carbon emissions from the perspective of economic growth target setting,expanding the application of environmental Kuznets curve in China to a certain extent,and enriching the relevant literature on the impact of government actions on the regional environment.(2)In terms of research data,this paper collates the data of carbon emissions and forest carbon sinks of 2,735 districts and counties,and reasonably quantifies the intensity of carbon emission reduction and carbon sink capacity of the districts and counties.Based on manually collecting the data of the economic growth targets of the corresponding prefecture-level cities,the relationship between the economic growth targets and the carbon emissions of the districts and counties is studied,and the research on the carbon emissions at the district and county levels is expanded.(3)In practical sense,the research on the impact of economic growth target constraint on carbon emissions can provide certain policy implications for the performance evaluation of the China government,economic growth target management and the achievement of the "double carbon" goals.