Research on the construction and measurement of the indicator system for green low-carbon circular developing economic system in Southwest China

Emission peak and carbon neutrality are critical components of China's overall ecological civilization, and the establishment of a sound Green Low-carbon Circular Development Economic System (GLCDES) is a fundamental countermeasure for solving China's resource, environmental, and ecological problems. This paper used the new development concept as entry points to establish a comprehensive evaluation index system encompassing six subsystems: development dynamics, production and living systems, green benefits, low-carbon benefits, circularity benefits and socio-economic benefits. The combined-assignment VIKOR model, based on game theory, was used to thoroughly estimate the construction level of GLCDES by combining panel data from four southwestern provinces, including Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan, from 2012 to 2021. The study discovered that: the construction level of GLCDES in all four southwestern provinces increased over the past ten years, but the increase was not significant, the four development effectiveness indices, including green, low-carbon, circularity and socio-economic, were significantly improved, the development dynamics index was not significantly enhanced, and the index of production and living systems declined in fluctuation from year to year. The construction level of GLCDES between regions was very uneven and can be divided into two echelons, with the gap between Chongqing and Guizhou being particularly obvious. Regions can be categorized into three major categories based on the number of dominant subsystems. According to the above results, the total value of the dynamic comprehensive evaluation of each region is governed by the principle of the long side, which is an effective way to improve the construction level of GLCDES by selecting and strengthening the long side in combination with its reality.