A research on coordination between economy, society and environment in China: A case study of Jiangsu

Environmental stresses with remarkable economic growths in China entail a transformation of development from the traditional path to a coordinated and sustainable one. Based on the connotation of development, this paper constructs a combined model of economic-social-environmental system, coupling with the entropy weight method, to measure the coordinated development of a combined system ESE as well as the subsystems. Via the data of economic growth, social construction and environmental protection in Jiangsu from 2002 to 2017, this study analyzes the current situations and problems faced by Jiangsu, so as to achieve a comprehensive development. Main results show that all the four kinds of coordinated degrees present an upward trend, where the economic-social coordination rises fast, the volatility is insignificant and the gap between different cities is not obvious. The time-variation and space-distribution characteristics of the economy-environment, society-environment and overall development coordination are basically similar. The reason for such fluctuations is the changes in the macroeconomic environment, which have led to an unordered variation in economic development, and the level of social development is mainly affected by the availability of social public service facilities. The fluctuations in environmental systems are mainly due to changes in water resources and sewage discharges, which are also the main factors affecting the overall development coordination level. Therefore, to further promote the sustainable development and optimize the spatial layout in Jiangsu, it is necessary to eliminate such problems as imperfect public construction and insufficient environmental protection and accelerate the economic transformation and upgrading.