China Regional Growth and Sustainability from an Environmental Perspective

China has achieved spectacular growth in the past forty years, and its economic structure has experienced great transformation. The country has also gradually opened up to foreign trade and direct foreign investment, transforming itself from a virtually completely closed economy into a major trading nation, and the largest developing-country destination for foreign direct investment in the world. However, since this reform, China has become a superpower in energy consumption. It has also become a big producer of pollution emissions. It has been widely argued that Chinas rapid processes of industrial development and opening up were relying too heavily on increasing inputs of environmental resources. Unsustainable environmental practices posed serious threats to Chinas natural environment. A growing concern China now faces is that the current pattern of economic development may not be sustainable, because it tends to lead to irreversible depletion of natural resources and deterioration of the ecological environment. The relationship between regional growth, sustainability in development, and the natural environment in China is thus an interesting and important issue that deserves further in-depth studies. Environmental practices play an important role in shaping Chinas regional growth, interregional inequality, and its future development strategies. Sustainability in growth and development from an environmental point of view exerts strong influences on the continuous restructuring and upgrading of the Chinese economy. The analyses in the present book delve into issues related to regional growth, interregional inequality, and the prospect of sustainable development in China from an environmental perspective. This book provides the reader with related facts, thoughts, models, and empirical results as well as discussions that shed light on those issues.