a b s t r a c tUrbanisation in China has resulted in an increased consumption of resources, energy and materials and led to negative environmental effects. All of these factors have motivated the widely discussed topic of urban sustainable development in China. The core of this discussion is how to quantitatively measure urban sustainable development. This research uses eco-efficiency as an indicator to measure urban sustainable development. A data envelopment analysis model was applied to eco-efficiency analysis using environmental pollution as an undesirable output, and a super-efficiency model was modified for ranking. Using real datum for 30 Chinese provincial capital cities, an empirical study was employed to describe their eco-efficiency. The results show that: almost half of the cities are fairly eco-efficient. The inefficient cities are mainly located in the southwest and northwest of China, which are the undeveloped economic zones, while some of the eco-efficient cities have more environmental pollution and consume more land, energy and water. When ranking cities using a modified model, it was found that Haikou, Fuzhou and Beijing were the top three most eco-efficient cities, while Yinchuan, Lanzhou, Guiyang were the bottom three. When exploring the driving force of eco-efficiency, this paper proposes changing the GDP-oriented growth model and appraisal system, continuously transforming and upgrading the industrial structure and stopping the migration of heavy industry from east to west, south to north and city to countryside.

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Chinese industry has developed greatly since China implemented its "reform and opening-up" policy in 1978. With the rapid development of industry, the problems of growing energy consumption and environmental pollution are drawing increasing attention from government managers and scholars. This paper divides industrial systems into two stages, an energy utilization stage and a pollution treatment stage, for accurately evaluating the total-factor energy efficiency as well as the overall efficiency. We build a new two-stage data envelopment analysis model with shared inputs to open the "black box" of efficiency measurement in traditional energy efficiency methods. Applying the model to data for Chinese regions, we can display the advantages and disadvantages of these two stages of industry. The results show that (1) the performance of Chinese industry improved during the years 2006-2010; (2) the energy utilization stage performance was better than that of the pollution treatment stage, but the gaps reduced year by year; and (3) energy efficiency increased during this period. Based on these results, some policy recommendations are given.

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