The Empirical Study Between Economic Growth and Environmental Pollution in China’s Municipalities

Abstract

In order to explore the quantitative relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution, the paper takes China’s 4 municipalities, namely, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing, as the target for research. In terms of indexes selection, we choose GDP per capita from 1997 to 2012 as the economic development indicator. On the other hand, we select discharge of industrial waste water, emission of industrial waste gas, emission of industrial sulfur dioxide and discharge of industrial solid waste as the environmental pollution indicators. And by means of the typical Environmental Kuznets Curve, we build the cubic polynomial function model between GDP per Capita and the four environmental pollution indicators. Furthermore, the empirical results turn out that the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution is abundant in N and inverted N shape, which means that inverted U shape(the typical EKC) is just one form of them. Finally, in view of the harmonious development between economy and environment, we put forward some effective suggestions.
Key words: The EKC; Economic growth; Environmental pollution