Research On The Impact Of Environmental Regulation On The Transformation And Upgrading Of Industrial Structure In China

Since the reform and opening up for more than 40 years,China’s economic development has achieved world-renowned achievements,the rapid economic growth,the continuous upgrading of the industrial structure,the substantial increase in productivity,the steady progress of urbanization,and the great improvement in people’s living standards,these series of results are all derived from the economic dividends of reform and opening up,which are witnesses to China’s new economic heights.However,the rapid economic development has also brought about increasingly serious environmental pollution.The severe resource and environment situation restricts China’s economic growth,industrial structure upgrading and social development.The traditional extensive economic development path that relies on "high energy consumption,high pollution,and high emissions" is difficult to sustain.Efforts to realize the development concept of "green water and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains" put forward by Comrade Xi Jinping,transform development methods,transform growth drivers,break energy and resource constraints,alleviate pressure on the ecological environment,and play the role of environmental regulations in the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure.It is an important way to promote the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure and realize the simultaneous development of environmental protection and economic growth.This article systematically studies the impact of environmental regulations on the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure from multiple angles,and provides references for the government to formulate corresponding environmental and economic policies.1.Based on the theory of environmental regulation and industrial structure,the development course and present situation of environmental regulation and industrial structure in China are carried out.The evolution of China’s environmental regulations is divided into three stages,Initial stage(1972-1991),rapid development stage(1992-2001),and the mature stage of environmental regulations(2002 to present).In general,the intensity of environmental regulations has shown a rising trend,and China has achieved better control effects on three wastes pollution.China’s industrial development has gone through the industrialization stage(1949-1976)before the reform and opening up,the industrial structure adjustment stage(1978-1991),the accelerated market reform stage(1992-2003),the scientific development stage(2004-2008),and the transformation of economic growth mode Stage(2009 to present).The structure of my country’s three major industries has gradually shifted from the dominant position of the primary industry to the dominant position of the secondary and tertiary industries.China’s industrial structure is becoming more reasonable,and the overall quality and efficiency are constantly evolving to a higher level.2.Based on the PVAR model to examine the relevance of environmental regulations on the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure.Next,construct a dynamic panel model to examine the impact of environmental regulations on the transformation and upgrading of China’s eastern,central and western industrial structure.Studies have shown that the impact of environmental regulations has a significant impact on the rationalization of industrial structure and the heightened industrial structure.Through the variance decomposition,we further investigated the impact of environmental regulation on the rationalization of industrial structure and the heightened industrial structure,and found that fluctuations in environmental regulations can explain 37.75% of changes in rationalization of industrial structure,and fluctuations in environmental regulations can explain 23.5% of changes in industrial structure.The results of the dynamic panel model show that environmental regulation can promote the advanced development of the industrial structure in the eastern and western regions,but are not conducive to the rational development of the industrial structure;for the central region,environmental regulation promotes the rationalization of the industrial structure,but has a higher degree of industrial structure.3.Restricted by the level of economic development and human capital,there may be a nonlinear relationship between the impact of environmental regulation on the transformation and upgrading of regional industrial structure.We construct a panel smooth migration regression model,using economic development level and human capital level as conversion variables to empirically test whether there is a nonlinear relationship between environmental regulation and industrial structure transformation and upgrading.The study found that environmental regulations have a significant inhibitory effect on the rationalization of industrial structure,but with the improvement of the level of economic development,the inhibitory effect of environmental regulations on the rationalization of industrial structure has gradually weakened.The industrial structure adjustment effect of environmental regulations also shows significant threshold characteristics with changes in human capital levels;when the human capital level is lower than the threshold level,environmental regulations play a role in promoting the rationalization of the industrial structure;when the human capital level is higher than the threshold level At the same time,the restraining effect of industrial structure adjustment of environmental regulation gradually becomes prominent.Environmental regulations effectively drive the upgrading of the industrial structure,and when the level of economic development is higher than the threshold,the role of environmental regulations in promoting the advancement of the industrial structure becomes more obvious.Similarly,when the level of human capital is used as a conversion variable,as the level of human capital increases,the role of environmental regulation in promoting the advancement of the industrial structure gradually increases.4.Local governments have certain economic and financial autonomy and will compete in environmental policies due to the pressure of performance evaluation.Through the establishment of spatial Durbin model,this paper studies the strategic interaction forms of environmental regulation execution between regions from three aspects of local government environmental regulation expenditure,supervision and revenue execution.On this basis,we investigate the local effect and spillover effect of the strategic interaction of local environmental regulation implementation on the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure.It is found that there is mutual imitation between regions in the implementation of environmental regulations,which means that the neighboring regions will reduce the intensity of environmental regulations,and the local regions will relax environmental regulations accordingly.Environmental regulations fail to effectively restrain the deviation of local industrial structure from equilibrium state,and there is a positive spatial spillover effect of environmental regulation implementation between regions,that is,environmental regulations do not weaken the imbalance of industrial structure of neighboring land;Environmental regulations effectively promote the process of local industrial advanced development,and the positive spatial spillover effect of inter-regional environmental regulation interaction significantly drives the industrial advanced development,which further proves that the innovation compensation effect of "Porter Hypothesis" stimulates technological progress and is conducive to the industrial structure advanced development.5.We study the impact of environmental regulations on the upgrading of urban industrial structure from the perspective of the quasi-natural experiment of the "two-control area" policy.First of all,from a national perspective,the "two control zones" policy has significantly promoted the upgrading of the urban industrial structure.In addition,from the acid rain control area and sulfur dioxide control area,environmental policies have a positive effect on the upgrading of industrial structure.This means that strict environmental regulations can not only improve the environment,but also help promote the transformation and development of the industrial structure,so as to achieve a "win-win" of environmental protection and industrial structure upgrading.Secondly,we verify the continued effects of the "two control zones" policy.Studies have shown that the "two-control area" policy has a significant long-term effect in the process of promoting the upgrading of industrial structure,and the impact of the "two-control area" policy on the upgrading of the industrial structure has fluctuating changes.Third,the industrial structure upgrading effect of the "two-control area" policy shows obvious heterogeneity in different city scales.This result shows that in the process of promoting industrial structure adjustment,attention should be paid to the uneven development of various regions.Finally,as far as the regional level is concerned,the “two control areas” policy shows significant spatial heterogeneity.Environmental regulatory policies have significantly promoted the upgrading of the industrial structure of eastern and central cities,but they have shown a significant inhibitory effect on the upgrading of urban industrial structures in the western and northeastern regions.