AN ASSESSMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPING CAPABILITY OF INTEGRATED AGRICULTURAL REGIONALIZATION IN CHINA

Based on the provincial units evaluation, this paper makes an assessment forsustainable developing capability of the integrated agricultural regionalization in China. At first,an index system of agricultural sustainable development in China is built up, which includes 5supporting subsystems of agricultural resources, agricultural development, environment andecosystem, rural society, sciences-education and management. We selected 95 factors on provinciallevel as basic indexes. Second, a relative assets/debt assessing method is used to gain relative netassets values (relative superiority) of every provincial unit, which are as supporting data forassessment. We also overlaid the Administrative Divisions Map of China and the Map of IntegratedAgricultural Regionalization of China by Geography Information System (GIS) to gain the area unitsof assessment. Third, according to the relative coherence principle of regionalizaticn, we transformadministration units to natural units through homogenizing all provincial relative net assetsvalues in every agricultural assessing unit. After making order and grade, we complete thesustainable developing capability assessment to integrated agricultural regionalization in China.The assessing outcome shows that the total sustainable agricultural developing capability of Chinais not high. Only about 1 /3 in number or in area has reached the level of agricultural sustainabledevelopment. The relative net assets values exists a reducing trend from East China to West China.It needs a long period and great efforts to realize sustainable agricultural development over allChina. Finally, there is a discussion to the study method.

Quantifying the impacts of COVID-19 on Sustainable Development Goals using machine learning models

The COvID-19 pandemic has posed severe threats to global sustainable development.However,a comprehensive quantitative assessment of the impacts of COVID-19 on Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs)is still lacking.This research quantified the post-COVID-19 SDG progress from 2020 to 2024 using projected GDP growth and population and machine learning models including support vector machine,random forest,and extreme gradient boosting.The results show that the overall SDG performance declined by 7.7%in 2020 at the global scale,with 12 socioeconomic SDG performance decreasing by 3.0%-22.3%and 4 environmental SDG performance increasing by 1.6%-9.2%.By 2024,the progress of 12 SDGs will lag behind for one to eight years compared to their pre-COVID-19 trajectories,while extra time will be gained for 4 environment-related SDGs.Furthermore,the pandemic will cause more impacts on countries in emerging markets and developing economies than those on advanced economies,and the latter will recover more quickly to be closer to their pre-covID-19 trajectories by 2024.Post-COVID-19 economic recovery should emphasize in areas that can help decouple economic growth from negative environmental impacts.The results can help government and non-state stakeholders identify critical areas for targeted policy to resume and speed up the progress to achieve SDGs by 2030.

The sustainable development of innovative cities in China： Comprehensive assessment and future configuration

Innovative cities not only constitute an important basis for innovation activities, but also play a strategically critical role in constructing an innovative country, producing new forms of urban development, and fostering urban sustainable development. Currently, China is marching toward the goal of establishing an innovative country by 2020, but in the start-up phase of this process of innovative city construction, the fundamental transition from factor-driven development to innovation-driven development is not being realized. As a result,a wide gap currently exists between China＇s innovative cities and the advanced innovative cities in developed countries. This paper argues that this necessary transition is being constrained by a series of bottlenecks in investment, income, techniques, contributions, and talents. The article takes 287 prefecture-level cities as its object of comprehensive assessment, developing a comprehensive assessment system for innovative cities and devising innovative monitoring system software in order to evaluate the current situation in China＇s innovative city construction. The analysis addresses four key aspects – namely,independent innovation, industrial innovation, living environmental innovation, and institutional innovation – as well as the spatial heterogeneity of the innovative city construction process. The results demonstrate that the level of innovation in Chinese cities is low, and the paper warns that building an innovation-oriented country will, as a consequence,be difficult. Some 87.8% of the cities studied maintained comprehensive levels of innovation that were lower than the national average. The level of comprehensive innovation in a city was found to have close and positive correlation with economic development. The level of the eastern region of China was, in particular, found to be significantly higher than that of the central and western regions. The levels of urban independent innovation, industrial innovation,environmental innovation, and institutional innovation showed consistent spatial heterogeneity, as did the comprehensive level of innovation in cities. In the future, the authors suggest, China should speed up the construction process in accordance with the basic principles of ＂independent innovation, breakthroughs in key fields, market-oriented, regional interaction, talent-supported,＂ with the purpose of building up Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai,and Guangzhou as global innovation centers; and Nanjing, Suzhou, Xiamen, Hangzhou, Wuxi,Xi＇an, Wuhan, Shenyang, Dalian, Tianjin, Changsha, Qingdao, Chengdu, Changchun, Hefei,and Chongqing as national innovation centers, by 2020. Through this process, China will finally build a national urban innovation network that includes 4 global innovative cities, 16 national innovative cities, 30 regional innovative cities, 55 local innovative cities, and 182innovation-driven development cities, thereby contributing to the establishment of an innovative country by 2020.

Green Barriers： Obstacle or Stimulation ？

Most viewpoints in China consider green barrier is one kind of non-tariff barriers imposed by developed countries and is unfair to developing countries. Different from these, this paper points out that green barriers, evolving from the background of sustainable development theory and the principle of environment protection, have positive effect on ideology, international institutional arrangement and innovation stimulation. Demonstrating the rationality of green barriers, the paper puts forward that green barriers should be regarded as the stimulation for technology innovation and industrial restructure rather than obstacles. The best way to surmount the green barriers for Chinese government and enterprises is to implement circular economy and clean production so as to achieve the harmony of trade, environment and economic development.