Environmental Quality,Energy Consumption and Economic Inequality in China:Smooth Structural Shifts and Causal Linkages

The space-temporal evolution of economic inequality is examined with Markov chain test method,and the dynamic interrelationships among environmental quality,energy consumption,and economic inequality in China from the province-level are tested by focusing on accounting for structural shifts in causal linkages in this paper.We first employ the Toda-Yamamoto causality framework and then augment it with a Fourier approximation which captures structural changes as a smooth process.The empirical findings show that taking into account smooth structural shifts is important for the causal linkages between economic inequality and energy consumption,and also between environmental quality and energy consumption.The causality analysis with structural changes provides a causal linkage between economic inequality and energy consumption in 26 out 30 provinces and a causal linkage between environmental quality and energy consumption in 7 out 30 provinces,while the quantities are 22 out 30 and 5 out 30 respectively when not accounting for structural shifts.These findings are consistent with the fact that provincial economics in China have experienced structural changes in economy-environment-energy sectors.We also conduct additional analyses which point out that regional and cyclical dependency matter for the causal relationships,and the method of HP filtering can not effectively solve the problem of smooth shifts in economy-environment-energy causality.

Global Power Structure Shifted and Transitional Multi-polarity Emerged

The world is facing the third important global power shift.The United States,EU, Japan,Russia,China,and the newly emerging power group are becoming the six big forces in the international center stage,while the former three forces and the latter three belong to two groups,waning and waxing respectively.The major shift in the global balance of power is bound to give rise to the transitional multi-polar configuration,which implies a shifting of leadership over the configuration,China and U.S.outweighing other forces,global issues looming large,homogeneity blending with heterogeneity,and a shifting center of world powers.The transitional multi-polar configuration is all about change,upon which China is one of the decisive forces.