China’s service trade competitiveness is weak, and the service industry occupies a low position in the GVC (Global Value Chain); therefore, promoting the upgrade of the GVC of China’s service industry is worth studying. Under the new situation of the continuous integration of the digital economy and the real economy, the digital economy has injected new momentum into the mid-to-high end of the GVC of China’s service industry. Based on the panel data of the service industry sub-sectors, the mediating effect model is constructed, and the system GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) is used to empirically determine whether the digital economy can significantly improve the participation and position of China’s service industry in the GVC, and promote the upgrading of the GVC of China’s service industry. This conclusion still holds after replacing the independent variable measurement indicator, adding control variables, considering changes in industry trends, and using quantile regression and other robustness tests. The promotion effect of the digital economy on the upgrading of the GVC of China’s service industry shows heterogeneity in different service objects and service industries with different factor intensities, indicating that the digital economy will affect the internal structure of the upgrading of the GVC of China’s service industry. The results of the mediation test found that the service trade cost, multilateral resistance to service trade, service industry structure, financial development level, human capital and service export complexity are the mechanisms for the digital economy to enable the upgrading of the GVC of China’s service industry. This study improves the analysis of the impact factors of the GVC in the service industry, enriches the theory of the GVC, and improves the research content of digital economy theory. This study also provides a reference for other developing countries similar to China on how to promote the upgrading of the GVC of the service industry in the process of digital economy development.

The water environment quality is not high, the spatial and temporal distribution of water resources is uneven, and the water quality-induced water is in shortage in the world. Strengthening the construction of water ecological civilization is one of the important measures to solve these problems. We took China’s Jiangxi Province and its prefecture-level cities as the research object, the water ecological civilization level was measured from the two dimensions of time and space by principal component analysis, and based on the panel data of prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2020, the panel data model was used to empirically analyze the impact factors of water ecological civilization. The results show that: (1) The level of water ecological civilization in Jiangxi Province shows a fluctuating upward trend, in which the level of water ecological civilization first increased, then decreased, and then increased from 2013 to 2020. (2) Water ecology is the key to affecting water ecological civilization, and cities with abundant natural endowments of water resources have higher scores for water ecological civilization. (3) There are significant differences in the level of water ecological civilization in different cities in Jiangxi Province; the level of water ecological civilization in southern Jiangxi and central Jiangxi is generally higher than that in northern Jiangxi; among the 11 prefecture level cities, Ji’an, Fuzhou, Jiujiang, Yichun, Ganzhou, and Shangrao have a high level of water ecological civilization. (4) Industrial structure, educational investment, and government governance level have significantly improved the level of water ecological civilization. Environmental pollution is not conducive to improving the level of water ecological civilization. There is an inverted U curve between the level of urbanization and the level of water ecological civilization. Accordingly, all prefecture-level cities in Jiangxi Province need to implement new development concepts and innovation-driven strategy, make up for shortcomings, and strengthen weak points according to their own natural endowments of water resources, such as optimizing the industrial structure, increasing investment in education, improving the level of government governance, and strengthening the connotation construction of urbanization, so as to promote the construction of water ecological civilization in Jiangxi Province. The research results also provide a reference for other countries similar to Jiangxi Province to solve the problem of water pollution, alleviate the pollution-induced water shortage, and improve the water ecological environment in the process of economic development.

With the rapid development of urbanization, problems such as the degradation of water ecological environment have emerged. How to improve the water ecological environment in the process of urbanization has become one of the urgent problems facing policy makers. This paper studies the coupling coordination relationship between new-type urbanization and water ecological environment, with the purpose of using insights gained from the study to help improve the quality of water ecological environment and promote sustainable development of water ecological environment. We take 11 cities in China’s Jiangxi Province as the research object, and construct the coupling coordination evaluation indicator system of new-type urbanization and water ecological environment, then using the coupling coordination degree model to examine the state of coupling coordination between new-type urbanization and water ecological environment from 2009 to 2019. We further explore its driving factors employing random effect panel Tobit model. The results show that: (1) The level of new-type urbanization in Jiangxi Province shows a steady upward trend, and the water ecological environment level tends to rise steadily and slowly, although the comprehensive score of water ecological environment in most cities is lower than 0.1, indicating that the situation of water ecological environment is not optimal yet and there is room for improvement. (2) In 2009, 2014 and 2019, the coupling coordination development level between new-type urbanization and water ecological environment in Jiangxi Province showed an upward trend, from moderate maladjustment recession to mild maladjustment recession, and from low coupling coordination to moderate coupling coordination, although the overall coupling coordination degree was low. (3) The investment in scientific and technological innovation, degree of opening-up and government capacity are positively correlated with the coupling coordination degree, while economic development level, resource agglomeration ability, education level and industrialization level are negatively correlated with the coupling coordination degree. These results can provide insights to support new-type urbanization and water ecological environment in the future, and hold great significance for urban sustainable development.

For sustainable development of the world, it is crucial to solve the problems related to water environment pollution, water shortage, and the inefficient utilization of water resources during the process of urbanization in developing countries. At present, scholars mainly focus on the measurement of new urbanization (NU) and the water ecological civilization (WEC) level and the coordination relationship between NU and ecological civilization. However, there have been few studies on the coordination relationship between NU and WEC and its driving factors. We take the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) in China as a case study, construct the indicator system of NU and WEC, analyze the current situation of NU and WEC in the YREB, and study the coordination state of NU and WEC in the YREB from 2011 to 2020 by using a state coordination function. We further examine the factors driving the coordination of NU and WEC by employing a two-way fixed-effects model. The results show the following: (1) The growth rate of NU and WEC in the YREB shows a fluctuating upward trend, where there is significant heterogeneity between the upper reaches, the middle reaches, and the lower reaches of the YREB. (2) The static coordination degree of NU and WEC in the YREB shows a trend of fluctuating upwards and then falling, and the dynamic coordination degree deviated from the coordinated development trajectory from 2018 to 2020. The classification of the static coordination degree of various regions in the YREB gradually becomes obvious with significant spatial aggregation characteristics, and the dynamic coordination degree of various regions has significant heterogeneity. (3) The opening-up degree, foreign direct investment, population growth, and urban–rural income gap are not advantageous to the coordination degree, while the marketization level, industrial structure, and human capital are advantageous to the coordination degree, but the regression coefficients of the latter two are not significant. The regional regression results show that the impacts of driving factors on the coordination degree have obvious heterogeneity. The research results provide a new idea and method that can be used by developing countries similar to the YERB to control water pollution, improve the ecological environment, alleviate water shortages, and improve the level of WEC in the process of NU.

How to enhance the water footprint benefit in conjunction with outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) is of great significance to reconcile the contradiction between supply and demand of water resources. This paper examines the effect of OFDI on the water footprint benefit using system GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) on a dynamic panel data. The results revealed that, in general, OFDI was not conducive to enhancing social, spatial, and environmental benefits of China’s water footprint, but was conducive for improving water footprint economic benefits. The results also showed that different types of OFDI exert differential effects on water footprint benefits. Specifically, the market-seeking and resource-seeking types of OFDI are not conducive for enhancing social and spatial benefits of China’s water footprint, but have improved (although not significantly) economic benefits of the water footprint. However, the market-seeking type of OFDI is conducive for improving environmental benefits of the water footprint, while the resource-seeking OFDI is not conducive for improving environmental benefits of the water footprint. In addition, the technology-seeking OFDI is conducive to the social, economic, spatial, and environmental benefits of China’s water footprint. Furthermore, the path-wise OFDI (investing in developing countries) is not conducive to enhancing social, spatial, and environmental benefits of China’s water footprint, but has improved (although not significantly) the economic benefits of China’s water footprint. On the other hand, the inverse OFDI (investing in developed countries) is conducive to China’s water footprint including its social, economic, spatial, and environmental benefits. The findings from this study have relevant policy implications and can help provide some policy prescriptions for an economy such as China to engage in OFDI and enhance water footprint benefits. For instance, in addition to expanding market-seeking and resource- seeking OFDI, China should actively increase the scale of technology-seeking OFDI. In addition, while continuing to expand path-wise OFDI, China should further increase the scale of inverse OFDI. By taking advantage of the complementary and synergetic effects of different types of OFDI, an economy can capture the whole effects of OFDI to reap the water footprint’s full social, economic, spatial, and environmental benefits.