Report on the Resource Efficiency and the Sustainable Development of China’s Special Economic Zones

Abstract

The method of material flow analysis (MFA) is used to explore the change in trends and the structural characteristics of material flow in China's special economic zones from 1996 to 2018, and to study the difference in the resource efficiency and the sustainable development of China's special economic zones. The study found that the growth rate of direct material input (DMI) in Hainan was slower, while the growth rates in other special economic zones showed obvious fluctuation; the per capita DMI of Xiamen and Shantou remained generally flat from 2015 to 2018; the per capita resource consumption of Shenzhen experienced a negative growth, and the DMI per capita showed a downward trend from 2008 to 2018; the resource productivity of Zhuhai maintained steady growth. Shenzhen has basically shown the effect of low input and high output, and the level of its resource productivity steadily ranks first. The economic material resource input of the five special economic zones is relatively slow, but the pressure on the carrying capacity of the ecological environment still exists; the growth of resource productivity cannot meet the Pearce conditions, and the balanced development of population, resources and the environment has not yet been achieved. From a methodological perspective, there is a certain value in the application of material flow analysis in the research on issues regarding the evaluation of resource efficiency and sustainable development; and to further look forward to the research on issues of sustainable development, it is necessary to build a “resource-environment” system of double-constrained evaluation.