Economic Growth Target Constraints And Environmental Pollution

The report of the 19 th CPC National Congress pointed out that the main contradiction in our society has been transformed into the contradictions between people's growing need for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development for the entering of socialism with Chinese characteristics into a new era.And it also set forth the emphasis on building a modern,powerful socialist nation that is "prosperous,democratic,civilized,harmonious and beautiful" and took "beautiful" and beautiful life as the national strategic priority.At the same time,the report of the 19 th CPC National Congress did not mention the goal of GDP doubling,which shows the vision of the government to adjust the speed of economic growth and economic structure,and to achieve the coordinated development of ecological civilization and economic construction.The "intervention" of the transition economies represented by China on economic growth targets will significantly affect the economic behavior of local governments.This article focus on the theme of how the constraints of economic growth target affect the local environmental pollution.Based on the economic growth target data of 230 prefecture level municipal government work reports in 2004-2014 years,this paper takes the number of prefecture-level cities as tool variable to test the impact of local economic growth target on urban environmental pollution.Compared with the existing literatures,the innovation and significance of this paper lies in:(1)From the perspective of research,this paper studies the impact of the constraint characteristics of local government's economic growth on environmental pollution from the perspective of economic growth target setting,expands the current perspective on the study of environmental Kuznets curve.To a certain extent,it makes up for the depth of the research on the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution in transition economies.(2)In terms of research data,this paper manually collects the data of the economic growth target from 230 prefecture level municipal government work reports in 2004-2014 years,studies the impact of economic growth target constraints at the prefecture-level city level on environmental pollution,especially for the depiction on the rigid and soft constraints of economic growth target,thus making the conclusion more innovative.(3)In the sense of research,the research on the constraint characteristics of economic growth target and its impact on environmental pollution can provide a new clue for us to understand the phenomenon of the more rapid economic development with the more serious environmental pollution in China.This study has important implications for the Chinese government performance evaluation and economic growth target management,it also provides policy inspiration for the building of a “powerful,democratic,civilized,harmonious and beautiful” socialist powerful country which proposed in the report of the 19 th CPC National Congress.The research results in this paper are as follows:(1)Economic growth target "adding layer by layer" significantly exacerbated the regional environmental pollution,and mainly manifested as the impact on air pollution.Various local governments have adopted a "seesaw" strategy for the treatment of different pollutants.(2)When the target of economic growth adopts the setting method of "leaving room for leftover",local environmental pollution will be reduced,and the environmental pollution will be exacerbated by the use of rigid constraints such as "above","ensure" and "strive".(3)Under the constraint of economic growth target,there is an excess completion of the target of economic growth at the expense of the environment.(4)The "pioneer" government which sets the target of economic growth before the province prefers to sacrifice the environment while maintaining its growth.(5)The test of intermediate mechanism shows that the restraint of economic growth target will drive local governments to exacerbate environmental pollution by loosening environmental regulation,hindering the advancement of industrial structure and restraining technological innovation.The above conclusions are still established in a series of robustness tests.