Environmental Economic Geography in China by Canfei He & Xiyan Mao

Author:Canfei He & Xiyan Mao
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811589911
Publisher: Springer Singapore

6.1 Air Pollution in China: A Perspective of Economic Transition

Economic development is nonlinearly associated with industrial pollution, relating to a wide range of determinants (See the discussion of Environmental Kuznets Curve in Chapter 2). Panayotou (1997) argues that policies and institutions can significantly reduce environmental degradation at lower income levels and speed up improvement at higher income levels, thereby flattening the EKC and reducing the environmental price of economic growth. Better policies such as more secure property rights and better enforcement of contracts and effective environmental regulations can help flatten the EKC and reduce the environmental price of economic growth.

Economic transition is the institutional environment for industrial pollution in China. There is no doubt that pollution demand and supply is affected by the institutional changes associated with economic transition, which has been conceptualized as a triple process of marketization, globalization, and decentralization. The triple process has been found to shape the economic geography and industrial restructuring of Chinese manufacturing industries (He and Zhu 2007; He et al. 2008). Marketization, globalization, and decentralization would exert different direct and indirect impacts on the environmental behaviour of industrial enterprises and the local government’s attitudes towards environmental regulations. The triple process may contribute to industrial pollution in Chinese cities by moderating the scale, composition, and technique effects.

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