China’s economic development has made world-renowned achievements which have subsequently brought serious environmental pollution problems. As a large manufacturing country, the industrial value added in China accounts for nearly 30% of the global share. However, the manufacturing industry lacks competence. Therefore, considering environmental protection issues while promoting manufacturing industry upgrading (MIU) is a critical goal for China at present. By applying panel data from China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) from 2010 to 2019, this paper uses a spatial econometric model to study the effect of green finance (GF) on upgrading (hereafter, upgrading refers to the improvement of the manufacturing structure and the transition toward green manufacturing) the manufacturing industry. This study found that the impact of GF on MIU in the YREB is significantly positive. GF has a good positive spatial spillover effect. Moreover, the high level of urbanization and high freight volume have positive impacts, the impacts of foreign investment and government fiscal expenditure are significantly negative, and the effect of the level of human capital on upgrading is not obvious. Therefore, vigorously developing green finance, optimizing the environment for manufacturing upgrades, and cultivating green and high-quality talents should be the future direction of government policy formulation.

Promoting the reform of the agricultural supply side and its quality improvement are crucial for realizing agricultural modernization. This paper tests the varied trajectory of agricultural total factor productivity (ATFP) in Jiangsu Province over the past 21 years. The paper used the three-stage DEA empirical analysis method—Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA), to address the uncertainty in the development of the agricultural industry. The paper introduces environmental variables such as urbanization level, import and export trade, financial support for agriculture, and transportation convenience. The research results show that: (1) the ATFP growth in Jiangsu Province presents a fluctuating trend; (2) The further sub-index research of ATFP in Jiangsu Province shows that the average rate of growth for agricultural technology efficiency (AEC) in Jiangsu is negative, indicating that the input cost of agricultural factors in Jiangsu increases and marginal efficiency decreases; (3) The empirical analysis of ATFP growth by region shows that there are still large differences in agricultural economic development level, the level of modern agricultural technology and ATFP in the southern, the central and the northern parts of Jiangsu. (4) Stage III: DEA empirical results showed that improving urbanization level, net export trade, and transportation convenience is conducive to improving agricultural production efficiency; financial support for agriculture is weakly conducive to improving agricultural production efficiency. On this basis, the paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions to promote agricultural structural reform.