Evaluation Of Green Growth Degree And Implementation Paths In China

As resource shortage and environmental pollution become increasingly serious, transformation of economic growth mode has become one focus of government, enterprises and the public all over the world. Green growth first emerged as a new growth mode in the early 21st century. Green growth means fostering economic growth and development, while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide resources and environmental services on which our well-being relies. Therefore, green growth fully meets the objectives and requirements of conventional economic transformation. Moreover, the concept has been developing rapidly worldwide. Developed countries and various international organizations have started to formulate certain policies, regulations, and actions to promote practices of green growth for years. Additionally, a "Green New Deal" has been launched globally.To drive green growth, the Chinese government has carried out a series of national strategies including constructing eco-industrial parks, circular economy pilots, low-carbon city pilots, and the resource-saving and environment-friendly society. Moreover, the government reported that the focus of China's development in the future was to promote green, cycle, and low-carbon development at the eighteenth national congress of the communist party in 2012. The development idea of innovative, coordinated, green, open, and shared by all was proposed clearly in the fifth plenary sessions of 18th central committee and will be implemented during the period of the 13th Five Year Plan. Such message demonstrates the government's determination of pursuing a green growth path. China has obtained certain achievements in economic growth, resource conservation, and pollution controls with the help of policy support. However, the greenness of its economy is still largely lagged behind developed countries.Against this background, this paper aims to address the following questions based on evaluation of green growth degree and implementation paths:What are key determinants of green growth? How to construct a framework to evaluate the green growth degree? How to measure the degree of green growth? What are implementation paths of green growth? Therefore, this paper conducted an in-depth study with following findings:First of all, the evaluation indicator system of green growth degree has been constructed. Drawing on the existing literature and related research, the paper selected 65 indicators in five dimensions including social economy, life quality, natural assets, ecological environment, and policy support to form the evaluation set. The Correlation Analysis (CA) and Variable Precision Rough Set (VPRS) were used to finish the quantitative selection after a round of preliminary indicator selection. The methods can ensure that the indexes on the same criteria layer exert significant impacts on evaluation results without having overlapped information. To avoid certain indicators being deleted mistakenly due to the over-reliance on objective data, two high-frequency indicators have been added to the system based on a rational analysis with expert opinions. Finally, the evaluation indicator system of Chinese green growth degree that contains 5 rule layers and 19 indicators has been established.Second, the measurement and evaluation of China's green growth degree were conducted. Considering that the characteristics of green growth degree are dynamic, multidimensional and complex, this paper has constructed the evaluation model of green growth degree combining the TOPSIS approach with the grey correlation theory. Additionally, empirical analyses have been implemented with the economy, resources, environment, and policy data to get the green growth degrees of China from 2001 to 2012. The research enriches the existing literature to a great extent. The findings indicated that China's green growth degree improved, but was not satisfying. The coordination of social-economic rule layer and ecological environment rule layer had significant impacts on Chinese green growth degree, while the volatility growth of natural assets rule layer and policy support rule layer led to a short-term decline of the degree.Finally, studies on selection of China's green growth implementation paths have been conducted. Green growth is a complex and huge system that is composed of different subsystems. A systematic and dynamic perspective should be adopted to identify the implementation paths of green growth accurately.Based on the evaluation indicator system of China's green growth degree, this paper utilizes the System Dynamic theory to analyze the causal relationship among social economy, life quality, natural assets, ecological environment, and policy support. By formulating the mathematical expression of various indicators, the SD model of green growth system in China has been built. Four implementation paths of green growth are simulated by controlling certain parameters. They are, natural development mode, rapid development mode, protection development mode, and coordinated development mode. We find that the effect of coordinated development mode is better than others after comparing the four paths. The coordination of economy, resources, environment, living and policy is the best in the mode. Furthermore, it reflects the growth mode in which a rapid growth, low consumption, and less pollution can be met at the same time. Last but not least, this mode can provide a feasible pattern of green growth for the Chinese economy.