On June 25, the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences released two reports as part of the serial research results of the Guangdong Think Tank Forum titled “The Green Development Evaluation Research Report Based on Regional Development Stage Features for Chinese Provincial Regions and the Guangdong Province” (hereinafter jointly referred to as “the Report”). The Report adopted the research method and indicator system based on the features of regional development stages to evaluate green development. The evaluation results were unveiled in the form of green development indexes ranking 31 Chinese provincial-level regions and 21 cities in Guangdong Province respectively for the year of 2016.

The results indicate that most of the provincial regions surveyed have better performances in green indicators than previous years, which means that in 2016, Chinese provincial regions generally made continued progress in resource conservation and environmental friendliness. Particularly, the intensity and per capita emissions of the four major pollutants under restrictions— chemical oxygen demand, ammonia nitrogen, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides—were reduced notably. Nationally, Guangdong and Fujian ranked the top two in green indexes among provincial regions, followed by Zhejiang, Hainan, Jilin, Shaanxi, Beijing, Yunnan, Chongqing and Sichuan. Inside Guangdong Province, Huizhou, Shenzhen, Zhongshan, Dongguan, Guangzhou were the top five cities on the list.

From the perspective of major functional zoning, in Guangdong, the optimization zones (zones where land-use intensity is high and environment capacity is weakening) have kept a relatively high level in green development, while the ecological zones are temporarily lagging behind and require effective measures to achieve high-quality development given high-level protection.

The Report put forward a new method based on the features of regional development stage to evaluate green development. This method drew on the well-known environmental Kuznets curve and incorporated the features of regional development stages into the green development evaluation system, with the aim of making the results more objective and fair.

(Edited and translated by Shao Yijia)