As a comprehensive benefit coordination mechanism, ecological protection compensation has received increasing attention internationally. China has also introduced a series of policies to promote ecological protection compensation mechanism improvement. The evaluation of ecological protection compensation policies is the main basis for the formulation, adjustment and improvement of the policy. Based on the front-end perspective of policy formulation, this paper selects 10 ecological protection compensation policies issued by the State Council and various ministries in China from 2006 to 2021. A text mining-based PMC index evaluation system using the ROSTCM tool is constructed to quantitatively evaluate these 10 typical policies, and four representative policies are selected for comparative analysis. The overall design of China’s ecological protection compensation policies is reasonable, and 5 out of 10 policies have good PMC index scores, which are: P1, P2, P5, P7 and P9; and 5 are at acceptable levels, which are: P3, P4, P6, P8 and P10. However, the PMC surface and the concavity index indicate that there are still some limitations that need to be improved, including the obvious internal differentiation of the policies, the single effectiveness of the policies, and the insufficient incentive and guarantee measures. Finally, this paper provides suggestions for the optimization of ecological protection compensation policies accordingly.

“Guiding Opinions on Relying on the Golden Waterway to Promote the Development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB)”, the “YREB Development Policy”, is a national Chinese policy aiming to promote industrial structure upgrading and high-quality development in the YREB. To test the effects of this policy, we used 2009–2019 data from 283 cities to examine whether its implementation promoted regional industrial structure upgrading. The YREB Development Policy positively impacted industrial structure advancement but scarcely benefited industrial structure rationalization. Moreover, the impacts indicated a temporary, unsustainable influence on industrial structure advancement, presenting a clear U-shaped development trend. The YREB Development Policy can more significantly improve industrial structure upgrading in cities with large populations. The effects of this policy on industrial structure upgrading in the middle and lower reaches of the YREB are almost five times that in the upper reaches. In addition, the policy more greatly impacts the tertiary industry than the primary and secondary industries, especially in the lower reaches. These findings have policy-making implications, enrich the research regarding the YREB Development Policy impacts on industrial structure upgrading, and provide an empirical reference to improve subsequent policies.

As one of the three major engines of economic growth in China, the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration has become one of the regions with the highest energy consumption intensity. To investigate the dynamic relationships between scientific and technological innovation, industrial structure advancement and carbon footprints, panel data in BTH from 2006 to 2019 was selected, and a Panel Vector Auto-Regressive (PVAR) model was established to conduct an empirical study. The conclusions show that there is a causal relationship between the industrial structure advancement and carbon footprints, and the influence of each on the other is significant. The impact of scientific and technological innovation on carbon footprints has a “rebound effect”. Scientific and technological innovation can accelerate the process of industrial structure advancement. Carbon footprints have a significant backward forcing effect on both industrial structure advancement and scientific and technological innovation, with impact coefficients of 0.0671 and 0.2120, respectively. Compared with scientific and technological innovation, the industrial structure advancement has a greater impact on carbon footprints, with a variance contribution of 25.4%. The research findings are conducive to providing policy support for the coordinated development of BTH and promoting the realization of the Double Carbon goal.

Rational water use is the basis for sustainable development. The issue of how to use limited water resources to satisfy the high rate of economic development has attracted a great deal of attention from society. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the intrinsic relationship between economic growth and industrial water use changes in Hubei Province based on panel data from 2004 to 2019. With the help of the Tapio decoupling model, the problem of decoupling the economic growth of Hubei Province and the water use of the three industries in 15 years was discussed. On the basis of Kaya’s extended identity, the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) index decomposition method is used to evaluate the driving factors and steady state changes in the three industries’ water use. The results show that, with regard to the decoupling state, there are three decoupling states between economic growth and industrial water use in Hubei province: negative decoupling, strong decoupling, and weak decoupling, which showed a phase characteristic. From the decomposition of the factors, the industrial structure effect and the water intensity effect are the key factors that determine the decoupling of economic growth and industrial water use in Hubei Province, as well as the core driving force to promote the decoupling state. According to the development trend, Hubei Province needs to take into account the efficiency and affordability of water resources in the process of promoting social and economic development. Therefore, in line with the research outcomes, this study provides effective and feasible recommendations for promoting sustainable economic and social development in Hubei Province.