China's Mayor's Promotion

China's high-speed economic growth depends on long-term implementation of economic growth based on local official's performance evaluation system.Behind this success is the destruction of the environmental pollution and waste of energy.The central government since 2005 began to change the implementation of the previous "single-dimensional GDP" performance assessment methods,and gradually put environmental protection into the performance evaluation of officials,and the results of the assessment as one of the criteria for the selection and appointment of officials.We use 2005-2012 China's 282 prefecture-level city panel data as a sample to explore whether the energy and environmental indicators are truly incorporated into the local government officials performance evaluation and promotion mechanism,and to study the impact of this change on the relationship between economic growth and environment in the process of urban development in China.Our empirical results show that the improvement of energy efficiency and the improvement of environmental quality will have a significant positive impact on the political advancement of the mayor.With the improvement of local environmental quality and energy efficiency,the mayor is more likely to get political move.This means,the central government set up the "environmental protection performance appraisal system" is to play its due role,and the effect of this environmental performance on the promotion of the mayor has a significant difference in different cities.In key environmental protection cities,this effect is significantly better than non-key environmental protection city;compared with the central and western regions of the city,environmental performance appraisal system in the eastern region of the city more effectively implemented.This change in the performance appraisal mechanism of such local officials can promote the sustainable development of China's economy.Since the implementation of environmental performance assessment,the local city's energy intensity and carbon dioxide emissions have decreased significantly.And the unit GDP energy consumption and pollution levels are earlier crossed the inflection point of the environmental library Nietzsche curve(EKC),the urban environmental quality has been greatly improved.