Government intervention and structural transformation play an important role in both the economy and carbon emissions. Based on provincial panel data from China from 2003 to 2020, this paper employs econometric models to investigate the impact of government intervention and structural transformation on carbon emissions. In particular, structural transformation is divided into two indicators: The rationalization of the industrial structure and the upgrading of the industrial structure. According to the research findings, government intervention has significantly promoted carbon emissions and structural transformation has had dual effects on carbon emissions; meanwhile, the rationalization of the industrial structure has significantly increased carbon emissions, while the upgrading of the industrial structure has slowed down carbon emissions, with these findings passing the corresponding robustness test. The relationship between government intervention, structural transformation, and carbon emissions varies significantly over time and across regions. Further investigations revealed that government intervention and structural transformation have a significant impact on carbon emissions in various panel quantiles. Finally, the paper makes policy recommendations in order to provide empirical support for promoting China’s high-quality economic development and achieving the “double carbon” goal.

Urban sustainable competitiveness (USC) is one of the important indexes to measure the high-quality development of cities in China. Meanwhile, foreign direct investment (FDI) plays the prominent role in improving urban sustainable competitiveness. Therefore, this analysis aimed to test the impact of FDI on the USC and its mechanism using the intermediary effect model with a sample of 282 cities in China during the period 2012–2018. The influencing mechanism includes the scale effect, the technological effect, and the structural effects. The results show that: first, FDI is significantly and positively related to the USC of China, and the scale, technological and structure effects all play a mediating role, with the scale effects being the most significant. Moreover, population size shows negative effect on the USC. Second, the impact of FDI on the USC is regionally heterogeneous. FDI can significantly improve the USC in the eastern region, but has no significant effects on the northeastern, central and western regions. Third, FDI in the eastern region affects USC through structural effects, while the scale and technological effects do not play a mediating role but both effects can directly affect USC. FDI in the northeast region still has the structural effect, but this structural effect does not indirectly affect USC, while FDI in the western region has both scale and structural effects. In addition, the technological and structural effects in the central region have a direct impact on USC, while the scale effect in the western region has a direct impact on USC. Therefore, the findings suggest that utilizing FDI should take into account regional characteristics in China.