A Study on the Spatio-Temporal characteristics and enhancement pathways of the green economic competitiveness of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao greater bay area under the dual carbon goals
Wei Gao
Hainan Vocational University of Science and Technology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59429/pest.v7i3.11524
Keywords: Green economic competitiveness; Nuclear density; Three-dimensional assessment
Abstract
The rapid advancement of urbanization has brought about traffic congestion and environmental pollution, highlighting the tension between livability and development pace in cities. Against this backdrop, as people increasingly pursue higher quality of life, ecological city development has emerged as a crucial direction for promoting sustainable development. As one of China’s most economically developed and innovative regions, the Yangtze River Delta plays a pivotal role in advancing ecological civilization goals and national development plans through enhancing its ecological city development standards. Against the backdrop of the “dual carbon” goals, this paper focuses on enhancing the green economic competitiveness of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. It constructs a three-dimensional evaluation system encompassing economic momentum, ecological resilience, and social welfare. Employing methods such as Gini coefficient decomposition and kernel density estimation, the study systematically examines the spatiotemporal characteristics and improvement pathways of the region’s green economic competitiveness from 2005 to 2022. Results indicate: The comprehensive green economic competitiveness index of the Greater Bay Area grew at an average annual rate of 3.2%. However, regional disparities exhibited a gradient pattern of “inter-cluster variation (50.23%) > super-variability density (31.41%) > intra-cluster variation (18.36%)”. The kernel density distribution evolved from unipolar dominance to multipolar symbiosis, with low-level cities experiencing a “club convergence” effect. The decline in the spatial σ convergence coefficient indicates gradually narrowing regional disparities. However, the competitiveness of the ecological subsystem (2.7% annual growth) lags behind that of the economic subsystem (4.2%). Core cities exhibit a carbon intensity over-limit rate of 12%, creating a mismatch between “economic polarization and ecological dilution.” Research identifies three core constraints: path dependence in industrial structure (traditional manufacturing exceeding 40% share), insufficient policy coordination among three regions (non-uniform carbon accounting standards), and ecological-economic imbalance (core cities’ ecological deficit rate of 12% vs. peripheral ecological surplus of 8.3%). This paper innovatively constructs a three-dimensional “goal-system-foundation” evaluation framework to reveal the nonlinear linkage mechanism among economic, ecological, and social subsystems. It proposes a trinity strategy of “inter-group coordination-industrial transformation-ecological compensation,” which integrates crossregional factor sharing, carbon intensity control coupled with ecological compensation, and the dual-platform development of green technology banks and carbon account blockchains. This approach provides theoretical reference and practical paradigms for the green coordinated development of the Greater Bay Area and the green transformation of urban clusters nationwide.
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