Environmental Regulation,Industrial Agglomeration And The Cities' Efficiency Of Industrial Green Development In Yangtze River Economic Belt

Promoting the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt(abbr.YREB)is an important strategic decision for China's overall development made by the Central Committee of the CPC in the new period.China's economy has changed from the stage of high-speed growth to the stage of high-quality development.As a strategic support belt for China's economic development,the YREB is a new force for China's highquality economic development.General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed,to promote the high-quality development of the YREB's economy,the key lies in grasping the “three major changes”,namely,quality change,efficiency change and power change.Improving development efficiency is an important thing to realize the YREB's highquality development.“Ecological priority and green development” is the strategic orientation of promoting the YREB's development,which means dealing with the relationship between economic development and environmental protection is very necessary.Industry is the main source of pollution emissions.City is the core agglomeration of modern production and living activities.Therefore,improving the cities' efficiency of industrial green development(abbr.EIGD)is the key to implement the concept of green development in the YREB and promote high-quality economic development.This dissertation focuses on the core research topic of improving the cities' EIGD in the YREB.Environmental regulation is the synthesis of regulating the environmental behavior of economic subjects.It has a great restraint and guidance effect on enterprise emissions and affects the green production capacity of enterprises.Assembling is dominant trend of enterprise spatial distribution,environmental regulation and industrial agglomeration are interrelated,environmental regulation plays an environmental regulatory role under industrial agglomeration,and industrial agglomeration has an environmental moderating effect.As a mega-economic zone,the YREB crosses China's three major economic zones of from east to west,which means the development level of the upper,middle and lower reaches of YBER is significantly different.With the improvement of inter-city transportation,network,communication and other infrastructure,the inter-city links are closer,the spatial interaction of environmental regulation and industrial agglomeration on the impact of cities' green development is becoming increasingly prominent.However,there has not been a systematic research on the impact of city's EIGD from the perspective of spatial spillover effect and spatial heterogeneity from the two dimensions of environmental regulation and industrial agglomeration in academia.Based on the existing literature research gap and around the country's major strategic needs,this dissertation systematically explores the impact of environmental regulation and industrial agglomeration on the city's EIGD in YREB,and put forward the suggestions to accelerate the process of green development of the cities in YREB.Firstly,this dissertation introduces the proposition of environmental regulation,industrial agglomeration and the city's EIGD in YREB.Then it fully analyses the connotation of the three basic concepts of environmental regulation,industrial agglomeration and green development.Later on it systematically combs the academic research context of the core theme of this dissertation,green development efficiency,from six aspects,namely,its scientific connotation,research dimension,measurement tools,processing methods of unexpected output,influencing factors and spatial effect in order to clarify the marginal academic contribution of this dissertation.After that it expounds its rationale of from sustainable development theory,circular economy theory,resource and environmental carrying capacity theory,externality theory and regional economic transmission theory.Then,it enters the core part of this dissertation.Based on the panel data of 110 cities at or above prefecture-level in YREB from 2011 to 2016,this dissertation comprehensively analyzes the temporal and spatial evolution laws of environmental regulation,industrial agglomeration and EIGD in YREB by means of linear weighting method,location quotient method,global super efficiency EBM model,standard deviation ellipse and Taylor index.Then,after sorting out the single influencing mechanism of environmental regulation and industrial agglomeration on the EIGD,this dissertation explores the direct effect and spatial spillover effect of their agglomeration on the cities' EIGD in YREB by using spatial Durbin model,spatial lag model and spatial error model respectively.And after sorting out the joint mechanism of environmental regulation and industrial agglomeration on EIGD,this dissertation uses the system GMM model to analyze the moderating effect of industrial agglomeration in the process of environmental regulation affecting EIGD in YREB,and further it uses the geographically weighted regression model to identify the spatial heterogeneity of the moderating effect.Through the above analysis,this dissertation draws the following conclusions:(1)The industrial green production capacity of the cities in YBER keeps rising,and the focus of green development is shifting to the upstream areas,but the gap of green industrial development between cities is widening.The cities' industrial green production capacity is rising in fluctuation,and there is a trade-off between industrial growth and environmental protection.The upstream region has obvious advantages of backwardness in green development.It can greatly improve production technology relying on undertaking industrial transfer from the middle and lower reaches.However,the synergy of green development of cities' industry in upstream areas is fragile,and the green development ability of major cities in Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration is far greater than that of cities in Yunnan-Guizhou region,and a good synergistic mechanism of green development has not yet been formed.(2)The intensity of cities' industrial environmental governance in YREB has been increasing,and the cities in the upper,middle and lower reaches' present a gradient increasing trend by the large,but the synergy of cities' industrial environmental governance is better as a whole.Cities along the Yangtze River try to strengthen industrial pollution control,especially in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River,which makes efforts to resolve the traditional outdated productivity and the intensity of its industrial pollution control has been greatly enhanced.The focus of cities' industrial environmental control in YREB has shifted to the middle reaches,narrowing the gap compared to lower reaches' and accelerating the integration process of industrial environmental control in YREB.However,due to the limitation of economic foundation and technological conditions,the improvement of industrial environmental governance in upstream areas is relatively slow.(3)The industrial development of cities in YREB shows the trend of centralization and specialization.Industry's agglomeration development is closely related to industrial transformation and upgrading,and the regional advantages of industrial development are obviously different.The cities' industrial agglomeration level in YREB is positively correlated with its own industrial base and geographic conditions.In the upstream region,the degree of industrial specialization development is relatively insufficient,and the agglomeration space is concentrated in the main cities of Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration.There are significant differences in industrial agglomeration among cities within the region.The cities in the middle reaches have a solid industrial foundation and are close to the downstream areas.They undertake a large number of traditional industrial transfers from the downstream areas,which makes its industrial agglomeration the strongest.Relying on technological advantages and industrial foundation,downstream cities vigorously develop green high-tech industries and focus on improving the quality of industrial agglomeration.(4)There is a dynamic accumulation of industrial green production capacity of the cities in YREB,and the early green development achievement is an important driving force to enhance the current industrial green development capacity.The factor endowment of industrial green development in the upper and middle reaches is relatively scarce,and this dynamic cumulative performance is more intense.Especially in the middle reaches,there is a certain advantage in the stock of green human capital,and the dynamic sustainability of industrial green development is the most prominent.However,due to the excellent allocation of production factors in the lower reaches,the self-strengthening effect of this kind of green development is not obvious.(5)Environmental regulation's direct effect on the green production capacity of cities' industry in YREB takes on a characteristic of U-shaped stage.The spatial spillover effect on the surrounding areas is closely related to the intensity of environmental regulation and technological innovation ability.Cost restraint effect of the direct effect is dominant in the early stage,and green guidance effect is dominant in the later stage.Among them,the industrial environmental impact of environmental regulation in upstream and downstream areas is consistent with the whole.Because of the large traditional industrial base in the middle reaches,environmental regulation's cost restraint effect has always been in the dominant position.Environmental regulation has not produced a good spatial spillover effect on the green development of cities' industry in the surrounding areas.In the overall scope of YREB,environmental regulation makes the cost of enterprises rise,which leads to the transfer of polluting industries to nearby underdeveloped cities,resulting in weakening the endogenous green development of cities' industry in the surrounding areas.Because of the relatively weak environmental regulation in the upstream reaches,which has not yet been able to produce significant spatial spillover effect of production capacity.In the middle reaches,the pollution diffusion effect of environmental regulation is particularly prominent by strengthening the control of chemical industry enclosing rivers and greatly enhancing the intensity of environmental regulation.In the downstream reaches,environmental regulation produces inverted U-shaped spatial spillover effect.There is a certain technological gap,which brings about technological improvement in underdeveloped areas through industrial transfer in the early stage.Then the effect of technological improvement is gradually replaced by the effect of pollution capacity expansion.(6)Industrial agglomeration fails to play a strong role in directly promoting the industrial development capacity of cities in YREB,but its spatial spillover effect has a typical stage U-shaped characteristics.The traditional industries with higher pollution emission are still the dominant industrial types of cities' industrial agglomeration in YREB.The resource and environmental cost of industrial agglomeration is great.The upstream cities have a solid foundation on resource-intensive industries such as minerals and energy,and the negative environmental effects of industrial agglomeration are the most prominent.The midstream cities' traditional industries are solid,but they are speeding up the green transformation and upgrading,and the direct effects of industrial agglomeration show U-shaped characteristics.The downstream cities have fostered a number of mature green high-tech industrial clusters,and industrial agglomeration shows obvious green development kinetic energy.The spillover effect of industrial agglomeration on the surrounding cities' environment shows a gradient shift from low to high level.Within the overall scope of YREB,the capacity expansion effect of industrial agglomeration will lead to disorder expansion of the traditional capacity for the surrounding cities in the beginning.With the completion of industrial transformation and upgrading in core cities,green high-tech industries will expand the capacity of green technology.The resource-based industry agglomeration in the upstream area has a strong warning effect on the surrounding cities,which has a benign spillover effect.In the process of industrial transformation and upgrading in the middle reaches,some high-energy-consuming industries spill over.With the gradual formation of high-tech industries,it produces a benign green competition effect.After a short period of laggard capacity expansion,cities' industrial agglomeration in downstream areas has rapidly entered the green capacity expansion stage,which has a significant spillover of green technology.(7)Environmental regulation and industrial agglomeration have obvious Ushaped moderating effect on the improvement of cities' industrial green development capacity in YREB,but it has obvious spatial heterogeneity.In the stage of low-quality extensive agglomeration,the negative moderating role is dominant,while in the stage of green high-quality agglomeration,the positive moderating role is the main factor.The environmental regulation in the upstream region is weak and the negative regulation of industrial agglomeration is not fully released.The overall quality of industrial agglomeration in the middle region is not high,the proportion of traditional high-energy-consuming and productive industries is still large,which has a strong negative moderating effect.There exists gradient difference of cities' industrial agglomeration's quality in the downstream region,but the overall industrial cluster has basically entered a stage of high-quality development,which makes the turning point of U-shaped moderating effect come faster.The joint effect's spatial heterogeneity follows the spatial structure of gradient increasing from upstream to downstream.Because of the weak environmental regulation,the negative moderate effect of industrial agglomeration in upstream cities it is only evident in Yunnan Province where resources-intensive industries are widely clustered.The new kinetic energy and the old coexist in midstream cities,but the traditional energy-consuming industries still play an basic role,especially in the urban agglomeration around Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan,Xiangyang-Shi Yan-Suizhou urban agglomeration and Yichang-Jingmen-Jingzhou urban agglomeration.The downstream cities' green high-tech industrial clusters are gradually mature,the positive moderating effect of industrial agglomeration is more obvious,especially in the cities along the Yangtze River and nearby coast.Based on the above conclusions,considering the demand for high-quality development in YREB,and from the perspective of environmental regulation and industrial agglomeration,this dissertation argues five suggestions to enhance the internal driving force of green industrial development in the cities of YREB.Firstly,promote the coordinated control of industrial pollution,strengthen the control of industrial environment from the whole YREB to maximize the effectiveness of industrial environment control.Secondly,strengthen the support capacity of green science and technology,give full play to the leading role of scientific and technological innovation in green development,and promote the development of industrial green innovation in YREB.Thirdly,accelerate the development of industrial green agglomeration and promote the industry to a higher level to give full play to the synergistic role of environmental regulation and industrial agglomeration.Fourthly,give full play to regional green comparative advantages,strengthen the synergistic cooperation of industrial production in YREB,and promote the green industrial coordinated development.Fifthly,promote the green integration development between industry and service,strengthen the supporting role of services to the green economy,and build ecological with the industry's green cross-integration and co-existence.