This paper is one of the first to offer a comprehensive analysis of the impact of green finance related policies in China, utilizing text analysis and panel data from 290 cities between 2011 and 2018. Employing the Semi-parametric Difference-in-Differences (SDID) we show that overall China's green finance related policies have led to a significant reduction in industrial gas emissions in the review period. Additionally, we found that Fintech development contributes to the depletion of sulphur dioxide emissions and has a positive impact on environmental protection investment initiatives. China is poised to be a global leader in green finance policy implementation and regulators need to accelerate the formulation of green finance products and enhance the capacity of financial institutions to offer green credit. While minimizing the systemic risk fintech poses, policy makers should encourage fintechs to actively participate in environmental protection initiatives that promote green consumption.

Chinese manufacturing has recently undertaken the responsibility of energy conservation and emission reduction to address climate change. This research analyzes green innovation on business sustainability in the energy-intensive industry in China from the manager perspective, researched data from 229 Chinese managers via structural equation modeling (SEM). The results demonstrated that green innovation had three dimensions: green product innovation, recycling, and green publicity. Business sustainability also had three dimensions: financial performance, environmental performance, and social performance. It also shows that green innovation had a significant effect on business sustainability in the energy-intensive industry. More specifically, we found that recycling has more impact on social performance when compared with green publicity. However, green publicity has a large effect on environmental performance; moreover, green product innovation has more impact on financial performance than green publicity. We also found that environmental performance has a positive effect on financial and social performance results. The alternative models were used to examine the second-order factors of green innovation and business sustainability to test the study’s robustness and supported our findings. Thus, this study contributes to the field by helping managers to make decisions when dealing with sustainable environmental management. It provides new empirical evidence to support the development of a low-carbon circular economy and realization of a carbon-neutral goal by 2060 in China.

This study investigates the influence of fintech on developments in China’s financial sector across 290 cities and 31 provinces between 2011 and 2018. Using a two-stage least squares instrumental variable regression approach and correcting for cross-sectional dependency, simultaneity, and endogeneity of regressors, the results establish a positive link between fintech and financial development. Our findings show that fintech supports financial sector development by enhancing access (loans), depth (deposits), and savings within China’s financial institutions. We also show that the emergence of fintech in the area of financial regulation (regulatory technology: regtech) can significantly improve financial development outcomes. Therefore, it is imperative for regulators to pursue policies that balance growth in the fintech sector while mitigating the associated risks. In addition, we use the difference-in-differences approach to show that policy measures such as interest rates liberalization also positively impacted financial development during the analysis period. In our conclusion, we suggest a policy framework for balanced fintech sector growth in developing countries.

The search for a green and low-carbon economy has been a guide to current energy and environmental research. Using current panel cointegration approaches, our study examines the interaction between trade and an environmental pollution proxy of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions by integrating economic growth and energy usage as major potential determining factors in this relationship for 49 high-emission countries in Belt and Road regions over the period of 1991–2014. For a robust analysis, we further grouped these countries into income panels (high, middle, low) and various regions (East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East/Africa, and Europe). The results of the panel cointegration tests revealed that the four variables were stationary in the long run. Similarly, our panel results indicated that trade openness had both positive and negative impacts on environmental pollution, but the effect varied in these different groups of nations. The results of the vector error correction model (VECM) causality also showed a long-run causal effect between trade, economic growth, energy consumption, and environmental pollution in the Belt and Road, Europe, high-income, middle-income, and low-income panels. The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) results further indicated the existence of an inverted U-form relationship between trade and carbon emissions. Finally, certain policy implications are discussed.