The win-win ability of environmental protection and economic development during China's transition

Since reform and opening up, China's economic development mode has moved from “extensive” to “bottom line,” and will further turn to “green” in the future. Using non-parametric and spatial econometric models, this study investigates the win-win ability of environmental protection and economic development and the best time for China's transition. The results reveal that at present, China's green development transition on the whole could achieve a win-win of environmental protection and economic development, but this ability is on a waning trend. During the past decade, the best time for China's green development transition was 2011 and 2012, when its economy came into “New Normal.” For many of the country's internal provinces, such transition seems to have negative impacts on the economy in the short term. There is a “U” shaped relationship between the win-win ability and economic development stage, and China has not succeeded in passing the turning point of the curve. Under the high-, medium-, and low-growth scenarios, this decay cycle is expected to end in 2025, 2027 and 2032. Compared with the environmental Kuznets curve, the turning point of the win-win curve comes much later. It means that while the public’s willingness to protect the environment is sufficiently high and has crossed the inflection point of the environmental Kuznets curve, the win-win ability is going through decay cycles over longer periods (more than 10 years). Besides, to better adapt to the economic and social changes brought about by development mode transition, the central government should give local governments much more autonomy.