Does new urbanization affect CO2 emissions in China:A spatial econometric analysis

The new targets of carbon emission reduction make China slumps into a development dilemma, and luckily the Chinese Government has been determined to take new urbanization path. Based on Chinese provincial panel data, this paper adopts spatial econometric techniques to analyze the effects of new urbanization on CO2 emissions in view of the geographical correlations. The results suggest that: (1) Chinese provincial CO2 emissions display significant positive autocorrelation, and specifically most provinces present significant High-High clustered characters, whereas some provinces present significant Low-Low clustered characters; (2) The level of new urbanization promotes CO2 emissions within local provinces and also exerts positive impact for neighboring provinces; (3) The inverted U-shaped relationship between new urbanization and CO2 emissions denotes that there exists a threshold effect, and the average level of new urbanization hasn't yet exceeded its threshold at present; (4) The average level of new urbanization in eastern China may have exceeded its threshold, whereas it's is far from its threshold in central China, and new urbanization promotes CO2 emissions only monotonically in western China. Overall, these conclusions illustrate that China should spare no effort to take the new urbanization path.