Research On Ecological Efficiency Of Rare Earth Industry From The Perspective Of Environmental Regulation In China

The Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China first put the construction of ecological civilization into China's “five in one” and took green development as one of the five development concepts.In the report of the Nineteenth National Congress,“ecology”,“environment”,“resource”and“green development”appeared many times.The report comprehensively expounded the background,current situation,construction focus and goal of green development,which fully indicated that green development has become the theme of the times in the future.As an important strategic resource-based industry in China,rare earth industry was facing with double pressures of structural transformation and ecological environment constraints.The ecological environment problems caused by the development of rare earth industry have attracted the attention of many researches,governments and the pubic.Based on the above situation,it was particularly necessary to evaluate and calculate the ecological efficiency of rare earth industry and analyse the results of environmental regulation of rare earth industry and its role in upgrading rare earth industry,also ecological efficiency in China.The sustainable utilization of rare earth resources and the sustainable development of environment have been attached great importance by the state.How to achieve a win-win situation between industrial development and ecological environment protection has become an urgent problem to be solved.From the perspective of ecological environment,this paper made analysis of the present situation of resources and environment of rare earth industry in China in the way of combing qualitative and quantitative research.On this premise,firstly,the ecological efficiency of rare earth industry in provinces with rich rare earth resources and relatively prominent development of rare earth industry in China was analyzed from the provincial level,and the differences among different provinces were compared and analyzed,and comparative analysis of the differences between the eastern,central and western regions was discussed;Then,Tobit regression model was used to analyze the influencing factors of ecological efficiency of rare earth industry.Then,on this basis,the impact of environmental regulation on the upgrading of rare earth industry was analyzed,and the endogenous problems that may exist in theempirical model were tested and controlled by adopting SYS-GMM method,also,the mediation effect of environmental regulation on industrial ecological efficiency was tested.The research showed that,the ecological efficiency of rare earth industry in the studied area showed a characteristic,which was that the overall level was not high and there was still room for improvement;on the other hand,the overall ecological efficiency of rare earth industry in the studied area was not balanced,showing imbalance in time and in different regions.Furthermore,among the factors affecting the ecological efficiency of rare earth industry,technological innovation,foreign capital utilization and environmental regulation had a positive role in promoting the ecological efficiency of rare earth industry.On the other hand,two forms of environmental regulation can promote the upgrading of rare earth industry;when regional innovation capability was taken as a variable to divide regions,it showed that the backward effect of environmental regulation on the upgrading of rare earth industry needed preconditions.There was partial mediation effect of environmental regulation on industrial ecological efficiency.Finally,based on the results of the previous studies,some suggestions were put forward to,as establishing a long-term mechanism of environmental regulation,improving the level of technological innovation,making full use of foreign capital,promoting the adjustment of rare earth industrial structure,strengthening the supervision of local environmental departments,narrowing regional differences.