Jiawei Liu

Water resources are fundamental to China’s industrial economic development, and enhancing their utilization and treatment efficiency is essential for achieving SDG 6. This study integrates precipitation into industrial water use and wastewater treatment (IWUWT) processes as an exogenous variable. A meta two-stage dynamic non-radial directional distance function (DDF) is developed under an exogenous data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. Subsequently, the efficiencies of IWUWT, industrial water use (WU) and wastewater treatment (WT) are evaluated. Additionally, the causes of inefficiency are identified, and differentiated improvement strategies are proposed. Key findings include the following. (1) From 2015 to 2020, the overall efficiency of China’s IWUWT is poor. Incorporating precipitation into the analysis framework significantly enhanced efficiency. The efficiency of WU exceeded that of WT, with precipitation having a more positive impact on the latter. (2) The western and eastern regions outperformed the central region. Provinces like Hebei, Hainan, Ningxia, Qinghai and Chongqing performed well, whereas Shandong, Guangdong and Jiangxi exhibited the weakest results. Notably, economically developed provinces such as Jiangsu, Shandong and Guangdong face considerable conflicts between economic growth and wastewater management. (3) Provinces with weaker industrial bases often face insufficient industrial outputs, while capital redundancy and inadequate WT volumes are common across many provinces. In the policy recommendation, we propose that alongside subsidizing industrial water-saving technologies, the government should implement additional mandatory water resource management policies to enhance policy effectiveness.

The Chinese government is constantly pursuing a green transformation of its industry under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the same time, the booming digital economy has brought new opportunities and challenges to the Chinese government, and it is relevant to discuss the contribution of the digital economy to China’s green development. In this study, we use panel data for 247 cities in China from 2011-2019. The impact of the digital economy on green total factor productivity is examined, and the mechanism of green technological innovation in this process is verified. It has been found that the digital economy can promote GTFP and that green technological innovation has a positive moderating role in this process. We also verify the threshold effect of green technological innovation, and the role of the digital economy can be inflated when green technological innovation reaches the corresponding threshold. Of course, these findings pass a series of robustness tests, and they are plausible. Accordingly, we put forward some policy recommendations to mitigate the possible problems in reality in order to promote green production in China.

As the leading financial institutions in China, it is crucial for commercial banks to pay attention to environmental protection (E), social responsibility (S), and corporate governance (G) in order to enhance operational efficiency and to advance the high-quality development of the country’s social economy. This research explores the market share of banks as exogenous variables in the profit stage and the market and sustainability stage to investigate the efficiency of 20 listed banks in China over 2016–2020 and innovatively incorporates indicators such as green credit, social giving, executive compensation, and ESG score into the meta-dynamic two-stage SBM under the exogenous variable DEA model. The results demonstrate the following. (1) By integrating market share as an exogenous variable in the model, the efficiency estimate is more precise. (2) In overall, UCBs are the most efficient type of banks, JSCBs are the second, SOCBs are the least efficient. All three types of banks are more efficient in profit stage versus the market and sustainability stage, JSCBs perform best in the profit stage, where SOCBs perform best in the market and sustainability stage. The three different bank types’ TGR performance is comparable to their efficiency value performance. (3) SOCBs lead in ESG investment and have the best ESG performance due to their distinct state-owned background. With their ongoing dedication to profit maximization and disregard for social responsibility and sustainable development, JSCBs have the worst ESG performance. (4) Policy recommendations are made based on the study’s findings for commercial banks, stakeholders, and regulators to support ESG investment and to bring about long-term sustainable development. Finally, as ESG develops in China, future research can consider longer time scales and larger perspectives to investigate the sustainability efficiency of commercial banks themselves, as well as their role in the local economy and industrial transformation.

As global urbanization continues to accelerate, so does the amount of harm to the natural ecological environment caused by excessive resource extraction. In several Chinese cities, haze and excessive greenhouse gas emissions have become crucial to the development of an ecological society. To break the previous energy-intensive development model, the data element has emerged as a key driver of the new cycle of high-quality development. Therefore, additional investigation into the synergistic influence of the digital economy as a new factor on air pollution and CO₂ emissions is warranted. This study examines the effects, spatial effects, and transmission mechanisms of the digital economy on the synergistic control of carbon and haze using panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2013 to 2019. The study concludes that the digital economy has an overall significant inhibiting effect on carbon dioxide emissions and haze pollution levels (the regression coefficients are -1.090 and -0.714 respectively), a significant driving effect on the efficiency of synergistic carbon and haze management, a spatial spillover effect, and a positive effect on neighboring regions (the regression coefficient is more than 0.239). By region, the digital economy in the eastern region has a greater impact on the effectiveness of carbon and haze management, whereas the digital economy in the western region has a greater impact on CO2 emission reduction, and the digital economy in the central region has an effect that is more consistent with the overall situation. Moreover, the digital economy may successfully encourage technical innovation, which in turn supports synergistic carbon and haze governance, and technological innovation plays a very important mediating role in this transmission mechanism, a finding that is resilient to geographical interaction effects. Consequently, relevant policy recommendations are presented.