Erzi Tang

Maintaining public health requires a clean environment; however, some industrial wastes can damage the water, atmosphere, and living environment seriously. To promote green development, policy makers in China have developed and implemented strict environmental regulations to limit the pollutant emissions and improve the environmental quality. Industrial producers implement research and development (R&D) activities to gain more profits in competitive markets. A comprehensive understanding of the green effects of R&D on different industrial wastes could provide important policy recommendations, especially regarding the coordination of innovative and green developments. In this study, the author empirically analyzed the influence of R&D input, including the intramural expenditure on R&D and full-time equivalent of R&D personnel, on industrial wastes, including the discharge of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia nitrogen, emission of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter, and generation of common industrial solid and hazardous wastes, based on the data from Chinese industrial sectors for 2016–2020. The main findings of empirical analyses were robust and indicated that R&D activities significantly reduced the emissions of all three industrial waste gases and decreased the discharge of COD; however, in the case of China, the partial effects on the discharge of ammonia nitrogen and the industrial solid wastes were not statistically significant. The green effects of R&D on different industrial wastes may vary and generally depend on environmental regulations, with various limitations. The most viable policy recommendations indicate that by expanding and initiating the green effect of R&D on different industrial wastes, innovative and green developments are more likely to be achieved in a coordinated manner. Additionally, this can also support special R&D activities, with the added benefit of actively developing cleaner technology to treat pollutant emissions. Development, while maintaining a clean environment to ensure public health, could be more sustainable if innovative activities reduce the production of industrial wastes. This study analyzes the green effects of R&D on industrial waste and can serve as a viable framework for future studies on sustainable development.

This paper proposes a simple model to theoretically analyze the impacts of emissions of waste gases on industrial profit and mainly finds that industrial producers yield products to pursue profit but emit waste gases, protecting atmospheric environment demands for decline in waste gases, emissions impact profit when the process of production is altered as result of public regulations, and actively treating emissions ease the distortions of production and maintain profit. As a comparison, industrial profit is not impacted by emissions when producers are allowed to emit freely. After theoretical analysis, this study also empirically tests the relationship between the emissions of waste gases and profit as evidenced in China and finds that emissions do not significantly impact profit, except for sulfur dioxide with significantly negative impact; industrial producers with increased capacity for treating waste gases obtained more profits. As a result, the cost expended on treating pollution was compensated in the Chinese industrial sector. Successfully declining waste gases for atmospheric environmental protection and maintaining industrial profit for economic output and social development in the Chinese local economy has global implications because many other countries and regions primarily pursue green and sustainable development.

This paper mainly introduces and studies public objectives and instruments in educational policies that authorities can use to improve and evaluate the quality of postgraduate cultivation in China. Under the political environment in the state, the standard for the quality of postgraduate education first includes graduate students in higher education institutions who support the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), educational authorities formulate, and implement policies and regulations surrounding postgraduate education under the leadership of the Party committees as well. From the political perspective, moral cultivation should become an important indicator in the evaluation of the quality of postgraduate education. Specific policy instruments including examination and admission systems, graduation requirements, and performance evaluations are designed to increase knowledge and academic skills or allow students to better perform work in their future careers. Although these policy instruments have played some roles in improving the quality of postgraduate cultivation in practice, some associated social negative phenomena also appear in the field, such as academic misconduct, excessive academic and psychological pressure of postgraduate students, etc. The moral cultivation and psychological health should be measured and assessed while evaluating the quality of postgraduate education. The public objectives surrounding the higher education in political level could provide some useful and constructive recommendations to improve the evaluation system that guides the development of postgraduate education.

This paper empirically describes and analyzes the structural contradictions between energy production and consumption in the Chinese local economy. Alongside rapid economic growth, energy usage in China increased gradually and exceeded energy production for a long time. For some particular energy sources such as petroleum, the gap between supply and demand is relatively larger than that of the whole energy sector in the economy. The process of turning fossil fuels into final energy products for use causes a great deal of pollution, especially emitting industrial waste gases, such as particulate matter emission, into the atmospheric environment. Increasing energy production directly and greatly to solve the gap between energy supply and demand in the economy may impact environmental quality and not meet sustainable development needs. It is difficult to coordinate energy production and consumption when considering economic development and environmental protection in economic operation. Importing energy could meet the excess energy consumption in a short period but often fluctuates from foreign energy market changes and global political events. For policy recommendations, some policies which directly lower energy consumption may impact economic development since industry is the main consumer of energy, and industrial production is an important component of GDP in China. Declining the role of the industry sector in the economy and reducing industrial product exports, including some energy-intensive products, could solve the structural contradictions between energy production and consumption under the condition of maintaining economic development and protecting the environment in China, but this is a long-term adjustment process.

Will energy consumption decrease when producers implement some innovative activities in industrial production? As a special but important innovation, how development of new products impacts energy consumption is a valuable issue. This study proposes a model to analyze the relationship of energy consumption and development of new products and finds that development of new products and production probably increases total energy consumption and energy intensity by output simultaneously since the productivity of producing new products may be lower than those existing goods with mature processes in industrial production. Producers develop new products with cleaner technology by saving energy or/and with higher initial productivity is possible to decrease energy consumption. After theoretical analysis, this study empirically tests the correlation between development of new products and energy consumption by using 2016–2019 data of Chinese industry and reveals that development of new products and production increased total energy consumption and energy intensity by output in industrial production, but decreased the usage and intensity of a special final energy product as gasoline. These findings indicate that the Chinese industrial sector developed new products with cleaner technology by only saving gasoline. The effect of total energy saving by implementing innovative activities with new product development in industrial production was very limited in China. Chinese industry consumes huge amounts of energy and spends a lot of money on development of new products; policy makers with the vision of innovative and green development need to balance development of new products and energy consumption.

This paper presents a model to analyze the mechanism of the global contribution of energy usage by product exports. The theoretical analysis is based on the perspective that contribution estimates should be in relatively smaller sectors in which the production characteristics could be considered, such as the productivity distribution for each sector. Then, we constructed a method to measure the global contribution of energy usage. The simple method to estimate the global contribution is the percentage of goods export volume compared to the GDP as a multiple of total energy consumption, but this method underestimates the global contribution because it ignores the structure of energy consumption and product export in China. According to our measurement method and based on the theoretical analysis, we calculated the global contribution of energy consumption only by industrial manufactured product exports in a smaller sector per industry or manufacturing sector. The results indicated that approximately 42% of the total energy usage in the whole economy for China in 2013 was contributed to foreign regions. Along with the primary products and service export in China, the global contribution of energy consumption for China in 2013 by export was larger than 42% of the total energy usage.