Relationship between air pollutants and economic development of the provincial capital cities in China during the past decade

Abstract

With the economic development of China, air pollutants are also growing rapidly in recent decades, especially in big cities of the country. To understand the relationship between economic condition and air pollutants in big cities, we analysed the socioeconomic indictors such as Gross Regional Product per capita (GRP per capita), the concentration of air pollutants (PM10, SO2, NO2) and the air pollution index (API) from 2003 to 2012 in 31 provincial capitals of mainland China. The three main industries had a quadratic correlation with NO2, but a negative relationship with PM10 and SO2. The concentration of air pollutants per ten thousand yuan decreased with the multiplying of GRP in the provincial cities. The concentration of air pollutants and API in the provincial capital cities showed a declining trend or inverted-U trend with the rise of GRP per capita, which provided a strong evidence for the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), that the environmental quality first declines, then improves, with the income growth. The results of this research improved our understanding of the alteration of atmospheric quality with the increase of social economy and demonstrated the feasibility of sustainable development for China.

Figure 1. Air pollutant concentrations as related to the output per capita of three industries in the provincial capitals of China.

(a) The output per capita of the primary industry; (b) The output per capita of the secondary industry; (c) The output per capita of the tertiary industry.

Figure 2. Annual mean concentration of PM₁₀, SO₂ and NO₂ from 2003 to 2012 in different province capitals of mainland China (bar charts on the Chinese map).

Four line charts represent the relationships between annual mean air pollutant and GRP per capita of the East, Central, Northeast and West China respectively from 2003 to 2012.

Figure 3. Regression curves between GRP per capita and air pollutant index (PM₁₀, SO₂, NO₂, API) in all the provincial capital cities during 2003–2012.

The blue line is the regression line and the pink area the 95% confidence limits.

Figure 4. Regression curves between GRP per capita and air pollutant index (PM₁₀, SO₂, NO₂, API) in four economic regions during 2003–2012.

The blue line is the regression line and the pink area the 95% confidence limits.

Figure 5. Maps of world PM_2.5 (µg m⁻³) and GRP per capita ($) during 2001 to 2006.

(a) PM_2.5, downloaded from NASA website and reproduced with permission from its authors and publisher (van Donkelaar et al., 2010); (b) GRP per capital, derived from the World Development Indicators of the World Bank (http://data.worldbank.org/country).