The Research On Chinese-style Fiscal Decentralization, Government Behavior And Environmental Pollution

The Chinese-style fiscal decentralization,which combines political centralization and economic decentralization,has brought the rapid development of China's economy after the reform and opening-up.However,driven by the double motivation of political promotion and economic benefits,China's growth oriented local governments tend to reduce the environmental regulatory standards in the actual area management.They develop the economy at the expense of the environment.On the basis of existing research,this paper analyses the internal logic of how Chinese-style fiscal decentralization led to the environmental pollution and the influence mechanism of government competition or expenditure behavior on environmental pollution.Then uses the provincial panel data of China from 2003 to 2014 to examine the theoretical analysis,and finally draw the conclusion as follows:(1)Chinese-style fiscal decentralization is an important institutional reason leading to the deterioration of China's ecological environment,with the increase of fiscal decentralization,the provincial industrial waste pollution levels are also improved;(2)From the impact of the path,by the dual influence of political promotion and tax incentives,local government competition and the expansion of fiscal expenditure will lead to the increase of pollutant emissions;(3)The impact of China's fiscal decentralization has great regional differences,affected by the level of economic development,the middle and western regions show a significant positive relationship,while the impact of the eastern region is not significant.This paper argues that in order to solve the above problems,we must improve the current fiscal decentralization system and develop the local government's environmental protection function.Firstly,in the aspect of financial system,establish a sound management system of financial rights and responsibilities,improve the efficiency of pollution control of government departments;Secondly,in the aspect of incentive and restraint mechanisms,change of local government's performance appraisal standards,replace the original economic growth indicators with the addition of environmental standards “green GDP”;Finally,in the aspect of regional environmental governance,strengthen the functions of government's environmental protection,improve the independence of local environmental protection departments,and increase the coordination of cross regional environmental governance.