With the intensifying deterioration of the global ecological environment and the continuous depletion of natural resources induced by human activities, the world is standing at a crossroads. As the largest developing country in the world, China has an urgent need to change its development model to a more sustainable one. Green development, the inevitable choice to promote the construction of an ecological civilization, is the only way to achieve a beautiful China. Dynamic mechanisms are the key factors to achieving green development, and the improvement of institutional frameworks is a fundamental guarantee for improving the quality of green development. The purpose of this study is to identify the driving forces that compose the dynamic mechanisms and to propose an institutional framework for green development in China. This paper discusses the various driving forces behind green development, and analyzes the dynamic mechanisms as well as the roles of the various forces in achieving green development. Finally, an institutional framework for pursuing green development in China is provided. It was found that the dynamic mechanism behind green development in China includes four aspects, namely, pressure, a pulling force, a pushing force, and a supporting force. The institutional framework for green development in China can be established from the aspects of education, stakeholder coordination, the legal system, ecological compensation, scientific and technological innovation, regional cooperation, and other system countermeasures.

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The question of how to proactively respond to population aging has become a major global issue. As a country with the largest elderly population in the world, China suffers a stronger shock from population aging, which makes it more urgent to transform its industrial and economic development model. Concretely, in the context of the new macroeconomic environment that has undergone profound changes, the shock of population aging makes the traditional industrial structure upgrading model (driven by large-scale factor inputs, imitation innovation and low-cost technological progress, and strong external demand) more unsustainable, and China has an urgent need to transform it to a more sustainable one. Only with an in-depth analysis of the influence mechanism of population aging on the upgrading of industrial structure can we better promote industrial structure upgrading under the impact of population aging. Therefore, six MSVAR models were constructed from each environmental perspective based on data from 1987 to 2021. The probabilities of regime transition figures show that the influencing mechanisms have a clear two-regime feature from any view; specifically, the omnidirectional environmental transition occurs in 2019. A further impulse–response analysis shows that, comparatively speaking, under the new environment regime the acceleration of population aging (1) aggravates the labor shortage, thus narrowing the industrial structure upgrading ranges; (2) has a negative, rather than positive, impact on the capital stock, but leads to a cumulative increase in industrial structure upgrading; (3) forces weaker technological progress, but further leads to a stronger impact on the industrial structure upgrading; (4) forces greater consumption upgrading, which further weakens industrial structure upgrading; (5) narrows rather than expands the upgrading of investment and industrial structures; and (6) narrows the upgrading of export and industrial structures. Therefore, we should collaboratively promote industrial structure upgrading from the supply side relying heavily on independent innovation and talent, and the demand side relying heavily on the upgrading of domestic consumption and exports.