The evaluation indicator of ecological development transition in China's regional economy

Based on slacks-based measure (SBM) mechanism, this paper builds a dynamic indicator to evaluate the ecological economic transition in Chinese provinces since the reform. The measurement indicates that Chinese ecological economic development could be divided into five stages since the reform: the poor development during 1985–1992 and the beginning of this century (2003–2009), and the good performance in early reform period (1981–1984), the period of 1993–2002 and in present years (2010–2012). The evaluation indicator of ecological transition, produced from the economic theory, takes both the growth quality and speed into account and thus could be employed as a more appropriate alternative of conventional GDP evaluation criterion. The heterogeneity and inconsistency of evaluation for each province revealed that Chinese ecological economic transition is still at the unstable early stage and more appropriate environmental regulations should be implemented to support the long-run process of ecological economic development in China.