Global warming resulting from greenhouse gas emissions has been a worldwide issue facing humanity. Simultaneously, governments have the challenging task of striking a judicious balance between increased economic growth and decreased carbon emissions. Based on the energy-environment-economy triple coupling (3E-CGE) model, we endogenously integrate climate-friendly technologies into the model’s analysis framework through logic curves and refine and modify the CGE model’s energy use and carbon emission modules. We conduct a scenario simulation and sensitivity analysis on carbon tax, carbon-trading, and climate-friendly technological progress, respectively. The results reveal that carbon tax and carbon trading contribute to reducing carbon emissions in the short-term but achieving the goals of peak carbon and carbon neutrality will cause the collapse of the economic system. In the long-term, climate-friendly technologies are key to achieving the dual carbon goal; the development of such technologies can also stimulate economic development. The best path for China to achieve its dual carbon goals and economic development in the next 40 years involves effectively combining the carbon tax, carbon trading, and a climate-friendly technological progress. Specifically, China can begin trading carbon in high-emissions industries then impose industry-wide carbon taxes.

The global spread of COVID-19 has complicated the international equilibrium of grain production and trade. China now faces external shocks in the international grain market and deep-seated problems associated with the structure of domestic supply. We used a dynamic, computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to analyse the effects on China’s food security and macroeconomics under the COVID-19 scenario and four technological progress paths in the agricultural sector. We showed that the COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting China’s food security in the short term, and critical quantitative variables such as grain production and grain consumption per capita have declined. Considering food security and macroeconomic development, labour-saving technological progress outperformed neutral technological progress, land-saving technological progress, and capital-saving technological progress in the short run. While land-saving technological progress contributes the most to the arable land area per capita of wheat and other grains in the long run.

The COVID-19 crisis has caused a huge negative shock to economic activities worldwide, leading to a reduction in income and changes in income distribution. Intergenerational mobility is an important indicator of sustainable social development. This paper explores the short-term impacts of the sudden COVID-19 pandemic on intergenerational income mobility and personal income in China. Using the variation in the number of confirmed cases across provinces, we construct a province-level pandemic intensity index and combine it with individual data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). We apply a general difference-in-difference strategy to identify the causal effect of the pandemic on intergenerational income mobility. We find that personal income is positively related to parental income, and that the COVID-19 crisis has caused a decline in individual income and exacerbated intergenerational income persistence. A more intense COVID-19 pandemic shock is associated with a larger increase in intergenerational income elasticity and intergenerational income rank–rank slope. We found that with one standard deviation increase in local pandemic intensity, the intergenerational income elasticity increases by 0.315 and the intergenerational income rank–rank slope increases by 0.198 on average. The mechanism testing suggests that heterogeneous effects among different groups are the force underlying the results. Low-income, low-skilled, and low-parental-income individuals have suffered a more severe impact from the pandemic shock.