China’s rapid economic growth is associated with huge energy consumption and high carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Although the environmental effect of fiscal decentralization (FD) has been widely reported, its impact on CO2 is still a controversial subject. In this context, based on the panel data for China’s 30 provinces during 2003–2019, this paper uses a spatial autoregressive model to investigate the spatial spillover effects of revenue and expenditure decentralization on CO2 emissions, respectively. The results show that: (1) CO2 emissions exhibit spatial dependence, indicating that the rise of CO2 emissions in the region can lead to the rise of it in neighboring regions. (2) Both revenue and expenditure decentralization have significant positive spatial spillover effects on CO2 emissions, implying that higher FD in the province can significantly accelerate CO2 emissions in neighboring provinces. (3) There exists regional heterogeneity in the spatial spillover effect of FD on CO2 emissions. (4) Foreign direct investment (FDI) and technological innovation (R&D) can effectively mitigate the adverse effect of FD on CO2 emissions. (5) Industrial structure and human capital can significantly inhibit CO2 emissions, while economic development cannot. Therefore, it is important to optimize the system of fiscal decentralization and strengthen inter-regional cooperation on carbon emission reduction.

China’s rapid economic growth has caused serious problems, such as environmental pollution and resource exhaustion. Only by improving the green total factor productivity (GTFP) can China’s economic development get out of the dual dilemmas of environmental degradation and resources exhaustion. Although environmental regulation helps to improve China’s productivity, its impact on GTFP is still controversial and deserves careful investigation. In this context, this study adopts the global Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index to measure the GTFP change of China’s 30 provinces over the period of 2003 to 2017 and then it uses the fixed-effect dynamic panel model to investigate the impact of environmental regulation on GTFP from the perspective of governance transformation. The results show that: (1) there is a nonlinear U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and GTFP, indicating that the Porter hypothesis is verified in China. More notably, the values of environmental regulation are still located on the left side of the U-shaped curve at present, which means that the promotional effect of environmental regulation on GTFP has not been realized fully. (2) The U-shaped relationship shows significant regional heterogeneity. The western region demonstrates the highest level of significance, followed by the eastern region. However, the U-shaped relationship is insignificant in the central region. (3) Governance transformation can not only significantly improve GTFP but it can also accelerate the realization of the Porter hypothesis by inspiring the innovative enthusiasm of enterprises, which means that governance transformation can contribute to the achievement of the improved effects of environmental regulation on GTFP. (4) R&D investment can significantly improve GTFP, where the impacts of trade openness and factor endowment were significantly negative and the influence of foreign direct investment was not significant. These conclusions provide a good reference point for optimizing the relationship between the government and the market, as well as promoting regional green and high-quality development in China.

The increase of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) is one of the greatest challenges facing mankind today. Although some studies have examined the factors influencing carbon emissions from various angles, research on the nexus between corruption and carbon pollution has not received enough attention. In this context, using provincial panel data for China from 2003 to 2017, this paper adopts spatial econometric methods to explore the effect and mechanisms of corruption on CO2 emissions. The results indicate that: (1) China’s carbon emissions present significant spatial agglomeration characteristics; (2) Corruption not only directly exacerbates CO2 emissions, but also, and more importantly, has a positive and significant spatial spillover effect on pollutant emissions, implying that corruption stimulates the production of carbon dioxide on a regional level, as well as in neighboring regions. As an internal mechanism, the influence of corruption on CO2 emissions mainly reflects the “local competition” and “innovation distortion” effects; (3) Improvements at the economic level, the increase in FDI, and upgrades to the structure of industry can promote carbon emission reductions, while R&D investment has an inhibitory effect. Finally, this paper proposes countermeasures to promote sustainable and high-quality development of China’s economy by strengthening regional collaboration and intensifying institutional supervision.

China’s rapid economic growth is accompanied by industrial agglomeration (IA) and environmental pollution. Although IA has played an important role in reducing environmental pollution, its effect on carbon emissions is still debatable and deserves further study. In this context, this paper constructs a two-sector general equilibrium model including households and firms to explore the mechanisms of IA on carbon emissions and finds that IA mainly affects carbon emissions through the agglomeration effect and congestion effect. Then, based on the balanced panel data for 30 Chinese provinces from 2003 to 2019, this study employs the dynamic spatial panel model to investigate the nexus between different types of IA and carbon emissions. The empirical results reveal that a significant positive spatial dependence is verified in the regional carbon emissions of China, indicating that carbon emissions exhibit a remarkably spatial spillover effect. Meanwhile, there are significant variations in the influence of different types of IA on carbon emissions. Specifically, specialized agglomeration (SA) positively affects carbon emissions, while the impact of diversified agglomeration (DA) on carbon emissions is negative, implying that China’s DA may contribute to carbon emission control. In addition, there is regional heterogeneity in the effect of IA on carbon emissions, with the western region having a significantly greater effect than the eastern and central regions. Therefore, the Chinese government should follow the notion of integrating territory administration and interregional communication and formulate regionally differentiated environmental governance policies to promote carbon emission reduction in the future.

The rapid development of digital finance has changed all aspects of human life and has also had a deep impact on the social governance system. This paper constructs an unbalanced panel of data of the theft crime rates for 289 cities in China during 2014–2019 based on the theft criminal judgments published on China’s Judicial Documents website and explores the impact of digital financial inclusion on urban theft crime. It shows that there is a significantly negative correlation between digital financial inclusion and the urban theft crime rate, indicating that the development of digital financial inclusion can effectively reduce urban theft crime, which is also confirmed by instrumental variable analysis based on the spherical distance between cities and Hangzhou, and that digital financial inclusion mainly reduces theft crime committed by more serious and highly educated individuals. In addition, mechanism analysis shows that digital financial inclusion can reduce the expected benefits of theft by enhancing payment convenience and raise the opportunity cost by promoting employment. Therefore, in the Internet era, it is essential for China to continuously improve social governance tools that adapt to the development of new technologies to achieve high-quality urban development.