A Study Of Environmental Kuznets Curve In China

The economics in our country has entered into a ‘new state’ after the rapid development during the past thirty years. The extensive economy pattern of ‘high growth rate, high consuming and high pollution’ is being transferred into intensive economy pattern. It is well know our country has high amount of the total resources and low ratio of the per-capita, thus it is unsustainable to increase the production by resources consuming and unscientific to focus on economic development without considering the environmental endurance. Balancing the environmental resources with economic development and providing mutual development of resources,environment with economics have become the common focus of attention around the world. Under such circumstances, investigating the relationship between environmental resources and economic development has significant practical meaning.The present work is based on the theory of Environmental Kuznets curve(EKC)hypothesis. Selecting real Gross Domestic Produc(GDP) per capita as economic metrics, ecological footprint per capita as environmental metrics, and employing the basic method in Econometrics to fit the curve that can estimate the relationship between environmental resources and actual economic conditions, the ‘inflection’point between variables is estimated based on the fitted curve to investigate the actual condition of environmental resources and economic state. This paper collects variable data from 31 provinces in our country within a period of 21 years starting from 1992 to 2012.Co-integration test is performed on the data between unit root and variables to determine whether long term co-integration is existed between variables; the setting up of models and corresponding hypothesis testing are based on the testing results such that estimated results are ascertained.The results indicate that there is an ‘inverted U type’ curve relationship between environmental resources and economic development in our country on the whole.When doing empirical research regionally, the relationship between environmental resources and economic development of eastern part accords with that of the overall condition of our country, in that the ‘inverted U type’ exists. For western part of our country, ‘inverted N type’ relationship is found instead of ‘inverted U type’.Obviously, the results of such curve fitting can be influenced by the limitations of chosen metrics, data and model. Apart from the results of curve fitting, the ‘inflection’points, locations and development stages of different regions are different.In summary, this paper mainly investigates the curve relationships, inflection points, actual economic development and environmental resources conditions in our country, both regionally(eastern, central and western parts) and on the whole, based on the results of estimated fitting. Comments on development policies in our country are proposed according to the results of empirical analysis. Those comments include:reconstruction of industry, innovation in environment and technology and energy efficiency improving etc., so that the economics in our country can be transferred into‘Low consumption and low pollution’ type, the level of sustainable development of economics can be improved, and the mutual development between resources,environment and economics can be fulfilled.