An Empirical Analysis Of The Xijiang River Environmental Regulation Performance

Since the reform and opening up, China's economy has experienced a sustained high growth phase, and made remarkable achievements, but China's extensive economic growth has led to increasingly severe resource depletion and environmental deterioration. Thus,the environmental issue has become a hot issue and the focus of China's economic development. In 2011, China's "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" proposed green, low carbon development concept, in order to focus on energy conservation, accelerate the construction of resource-saving and environment-friendly consumption and production patterns, improve the degree of ecological civilization. Eighteen report proposes the concept of ecological civilization into the whole process of economic, political, cultural and social construction, efforts to form a industrial structure of resource conservation and environmental protection, a style of production and life. Conflict between economic development and environment protection, the existence of negative externalities and environmental carrying threshold, are clear to maximize social welfare as the core of necessary environmental regulation.Xijiang River is the largest river system in the Pearl River Basin, also is the longest river in southern China. It originated in Qujing Wumeng, flows through Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong provinces, covering coastal areas and underdeveloped southwest areas. It also is the axis of the country's western development key economic zone and "One Belt And One Road", while the Xijiang River in economic development is also beset by environmental problems.Based on the current development of Xijiang River, this paper establishes Environmental Kuznets Curve econometric model to measure, analyze the overall pollution in the Xijiang River from 1992 to 2012. Then this paper selects pollution-intensive industries location quotient, the target of economic growth contribution rate to analyze the development of pollution intensive industries. And the paper uses spatial autocorrelation model to analyze the status quo of Xijiang pollution over the city level in four provinces. Finally, this paper analyze the coordinated development of 47 prefecture-level cities in Xijiang River from 2003 to 2012, and comprehensively evaluates Environmental Regulation performance of Xijiang River by building the coordinated development of regional indicators and principal component analysis law.Through empirical analysis, this paper finds that in the period 1992-2012, environmental regulation of Xijiang River is weaker than the national average, and the performance of environmental regulation is poor, but the Xijiang four provinces have been the turning point of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. Pollution-intensive industries in Xijiang River developed rapidly, has become pillar industries of economic growth, but the ability to contribute to the economy weakened. At 2012, Xijiang River appeared high value agglomeration of emissions, formed the pollution-intensive core of the Pearl River Delta and the southwestern Guizhou. From 2003 to 2012, the overall coordinated development of Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, steadily increased, but the economic and social development in Yunnan is behind the front three. Since 2003 to 2012, the level of coordinated development of Foshan in Guangdong province decreased significantly.To improve the environmental performance and sustainable development of Xijiang River, the mode of Xijiang River economic development must turn to the "new nomal" Xijiang need to actively develop modern agriculture, promote intensive management of agricultural production, improve land use efficiency and labor productivity. Xijiang should transform traditional industries, adjust and optimize the industrial structure, promote industrial development to shift from extensive to intensive processing, developing strategic emerging industries. Xijiang also need to change the development concept, make the main pollution and the real energy into the performance evaluation and statistical category; meanwhile, Xijiang accelerate the transition from administrative to a market-based environmental regulation. Xijiang should focus on improving people's livelihood, vigorously develop social undertakings, accelerate the improvement of the employment service system, establish and improve the protection of basic health care, urban and rural medical insurance system, implement quality education, introducing foreign talents and education mode.