The Economic Growth Target,environmental Regulation And City's Green Growth In China

China's economy has entered a new era and a new stage,facing the downward economic pressure under the continuous impact of the global COVID-19,and the construction of ecological civilization has also entered a critical period of overcoming difficulties.How to stabilize economic growth and protect the ecological environment to promote green growth is of great theoretical and practical significance to guarantee stable and far-reaching economic growth and achieve high-quality development.Green growth requires a balance between “steady growth” policy and environmental regulation policy.In this process,incentive compatibility and timely correction between central governments and local governments play an important role.China's economic growth target has inspired the local governments to “compete for growth” and driven the miracle of China's economic growth.But recently,with the change of the principal contradiction,the policy goal of the economic growth target is gradually turning to “steady growth” and reaping both the quality and benefit of development.Environmental pollution,a subsidiary of the rapid economic growth,has become a major consideration in the policy change.Nevertheless,pollution control through environmental regulation may be at the cost of short-term economic growth,resulting in the inconsistency of endogenous incentives for local governments in economic growth and environmental governance.Therefore,we focus on the core issue that whether the economic growth target could promote green growth,and exploring the phenomenon,causes and consequences of the inconsistency between the economic growth target and environmental regulation meanwhile,and then further analyzing the possibility of the consistency between the two policies in achieving green growth.After carding of the relevant theories and characteristic facts,we take the 282 Chinese cities in 2006-2018 as a sample and divide the economic growth target into economic growth target setting and economic growth target pressure to explore the mechanism of its interaction with environmental regulation and their impact on green growth;then we point out an appropriate range of economic growth target.Moreover,considering that the environmental responsibility fulfillment of market entities is the micro basis of green growth,we analyze the influence of economic growth target pressure and environmental regulation on promoting enterprises' environmental responsibility fulfillment.Finally,since the effective and reasonable economic growth target setting to avoid the pressure of economic growth target may be an ideal situation and not conducive to benign competition under incentives,we take technological innovation as the core element to analyze how the economic growth target setting is consistent with environmental regulation to promote green growth;because the resource allocation policy attribute of economic growth target makes it a feasible strategy to realize growth by technological innovation,which is the same as the “Porter hypothesis” that environmental regulation promotes technological innovation to achieve green growth.Based on the above idea,the following conclusions are drawn and corresponding policy suggestions are put forward.Firstly,the policy itself of economic growth target setting does not have a significant impact on green growth.Resource allocation strategies to achieve economic growth target will trigger different growth consequences.A balanced economic growth target setting method that is not based on regional resource endowments resulting in economic growth target pressure is the main reason that restricts the realization of green growth.This negative impact is significant in the eastern and western regions of China,but not in the central region;facing higher pressure on economic growth targets,it will push local governments to give priority to economic growth rather than green growth by relaxing the implementation of environmental regulations;however,as the central environmental supervision pressure increasing,this negative effect will gradually weaken;when economic growth target setting is appropriately lowered in areas with excessive pressure will help achieve green growth;The research conclusions have strong robustness.Secondly,under the political tournament competition,local governments have formed economic growth target based on competition rather than regional economic development endowments,which in turn forms the main reason for the pressure on economic growth target to affect green growth;This economic growth target setting mode has resulted in the interaction of environmental regulation in the same provincial“race to the top” and inter-provincial and adjacent regions “race to the bottom”.It indicates that under the target management liability system,the provincial government plays an important coordination role in the cities' environmental regulation,who strictly supervises the environmental regulation in the cities within the province to achieve economic growth goals,and relatively loose the supervision in the cities on the provincial borders in order to achieve economic growth;the robustness test based on resource competitiveness also confirms the above conclusion.Furthermore,green growth depends on the joint actions of local governments and enterprises,which are the main body of economic growth goals realization and environmental regulation enforcement.The “U” relationship test shows that a higher level of environmental regulation enforcement can help enterprises fulfill their environmental responsibilities;However,the pressure of economic growth target squeezed out the effect of environmental regulation;Under the pressure of economic growth target,a higher level of environmental regulation enforcement is required to promote enterprises to cooperate in fulfilling environmental responsibilities,but at this time the level of corporate environmental responsibility performance has declined;The crowding-out effect of the pressure of economic growth targets only exists in state-owned enterprises,polluting enterprises,and high-profit pressure enterprises,indicating that local governments will strategically allocate economic growth targets and environmental regulatory policy target among different enterprises due to comprehensive considerations such as political preference and economic contribution,and strive to find a balance between promoting growth and protecting the environment.Finally,based on the differences in resource allocation strategies for achieving economic growth goals,it is found that relying on technological innovation-driven economic growth goal management strategies can achieve green growth;this strategy is consistent with environmental regulation to promote technological innovation to achieve green growth,indicating that it is feasible to achieve green growth through economic growth goals in practice.This study not only verifies the contradiction between economic growth target and environmental regulatory policies in the process of promoting green growth,but also verifies its possible consistent path.It provides a theoretical and practical basis for grasping the balance of multiple policies and promoting the combination of a promising government and an effective market to help my country's high-quality development.