Band 11, Heft 4

China has the largest energy system in the world, with fossil energy accounting for 84%. The carbon neutrality target calls for peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2060. By then, the non-fossil energy will account for over 80% of China’s energy mix. Based on China’s national conditions, this paper makes scenario analysis of carbon peaking in 2030. The results of this paper indicate that the peak values of carbon emission in 2030 depends on both the development of clean energy and the growth of energy power demand. Therefore, the growth rate of the two should be balanced to control the peak carbon emission. High-quality economic growth in China in the context of carbon neutrality requires “double decoupling”, namely, decoupling GDP from the consumption of fossil energy and the growth of energy power demand as much as possible. To this end, this paper proposes a systematic solution considering both the demand and supply sides, with market-oriented measures that are workable for it. Ensuring the safe and stable supply of energy (power) is the basic principle of clean and low-carbon economic transformation, as well as a major challenge for energy system transformation. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a path for coal power decommissioning and low-carbon transformation in line with China’s national conditions.

This paper aims at summarizing the evolutionary law of income distribution system and providing a reference for the coordination arrangement of primary distribution, redistribution and third distribution policies. Based on policies, this paper refines the evolutionary law of income distribution and estimates the proportional relationship among primary distribution, redistribution and third distribution by using the national income data. Its new insight lies in abstracting the evolutionary logic of the income distribution system shifting from emphasizing efficiency to prioritizing equity and estimating the proportional relationship among the primary distribution, redistribution and third distribution. The study found that China’s income distribution system follows the evolutionary logic of shifting from efficiency to equity. In addition, China has overcome egalitarianism, given priority to efficiency with due consideration to equity, and placed more emphasis on equity while balancing the relationship between equity and efficiency, promoting the four stages of common prosperity. Primary distribution, the dominant mechanism for income distribution, is required to provide an equitable distribution order. Redistribution, an important means of income distribution, needs to increase expenditures on people’s living and social security. Third distribution, a useful supplement to income distribution, needs to design a policy system for incentive compatibility. This paper provides policy references for promoting common prosperity and conducting fundamental institutional arrangements for primary distribution, redistribution and third distribution.

At present, China is in the period of large-scale tax and fee cuts and external pandemic shocks. Local governments’ financial pressure has intensified. There is a lack of existing studies on how it will affect local carbon emissions. This paper uses the quasi-natural experiment of the 2010 educational authority reform to measure exogenous changes in financial pressure. It adopts the continuous double differential method to empirically investigate the impact of local financial pressure on carbon emissions. The results of the paper are as follows. First, the financial pressure generated by the educational authority reform has significantly increased local carbon emission intensity. This indicates that local governments will address carbon emissions in other ways when they feel financial pressure. Second, to ease financial pressure, local governments will regulate high energy-consuming enterprises and utilize their high production value and strong tax-generating ability to scale up their production capacity and obtain more tax revenues, which will lead to a large amount of carbon emissions. This study is of important reference significance for how to deal with financial pressure from now on and how to well handle the relationship between local finance and carbon emissions.

The allocation mechanism for carbon emissions permit(CEP) is an institutional guarantee for advancing the development of China’s unified carbon trading market. The initial allocation of carbon quotas fails to solve new inequalities stemming from subsidizing cleaner production. This paper constructs a theoretical framework that describes China’s progressive decline in carbon intensity, calculates the equilibrium solution on the neoclassical saddle point path using the shooting method, and studies the income distribution imbalance caused by cleaner production subsidies and the reallocation mechanism of carbon emissions permit The main conclusion is that the incremental cleaner production subsidy policy meets the goal of maximizing welfare on the saddle point path, but it may lead to over-investment in the clean sector, thus causing the income distribution imbalance among entities. Further research suggests that the amount of carbon emissions permit acquired by the clean sector should be higher than the actual emissions in the trading market and that, as the cleaner support increases, the share of carbon emissions permit acquired by the sector should be constantly increased through reallocation mechanism. This helps achieve the Pareto improvement in all parties’ economic benefits.

Pollution has become an unavoidable concern as China’s high-quality development is underway. How to reduce pollution is an imperative issue for China to address. Pollution emissions are closely related to factor inputs, production processes and pollution control measures. Are there other forces to cut emissions besides regulatory control? Taking sulfur dioxide as an example, this paper probes into the potential mechanism through which technical efficiency drives pollution reduction in the context of opening to foreign investment. The results reveal that the openness to foreign investment remarkably lowers pollution emissions of firms, with SOEs, large firms and exporters seeing more pronounced pollution reduction effect after opening to foreign investment, while firms in pollution-intensive industries and less regulated areas are weaker in pollution reduction. A look into firm behavior suggests that the openness to foreign investment reduces pollutant emissions by improving technical efficiency rather than by raising investment in pollution control. The pollution reduction effect resulting from the openness is reflected in the improvement of intra-firm emission reduction capacity instead of inter-firm resource reallocation effect, according to an analysis at the aggregate level. This paper concludes that technical efficiency gains are an important tool to advance pollution reduction, and that China must be more flexible in leveraging the pollution reduction effect of other policies regarding technical efficiency to drive its high-quality development that is green.

In recent years, the rapid development of fintech has brought far-reaching changes to the financial sector. At the same time, fintech may cause potential systemic risk in the financial sector, which has aroused special concerns from financial regulatory authorities. Based on the micro data of China’s listed banks from 2013 to 2020, this paper analyzes the impact of fintech development on systemic risk in China’s banking industry and its mechanism. It reveals that for a micro bank, fintech progress increases its risk-taking and enhances inter-bank linkages, which results in significantly amplified systemic risk, and the impact is time-lagged and persistent. In addition, the heterogeneity analysis shows that the impacts of fintech on state-owned banks and other banks are heterogeneous and the margining risk of state-owned banks is lower when the fintech improves. It is also found that enhancing macroprudential supervision can reduce the systemic risk spillover of fintech. Robustness analyses including GMM regression and the method of instrumental variables prove that the conclusion is robust. This paper is of theoretical and policy significance for the prevention of systemic risk in the banking industry as China develops fintech.