In the current international context, the ways in which financial technology (FinTech) affects sustainable development need to be urgently identified. However, relevant studies are rare and there is no consensus on the optimal indicator system for sustainable development. Therefore, this study proposes an indicator system to evaluate sustainability and conducts in-depth analysis of the relationship between FinTech and sustainable development based on data of peer-to-peer platforms (P2P) in 31 Chinese provinces. The empirical results show the existence of a U-shaped relationship between FinTech and sustainable development, mainly determined by the pattern of extensive economic growth. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis indicates that there are significant regional differences in its impact on sustainable development, being significant in China’s eastern and central regions and insignificant in the western region; moreover, the impact on the central region is significantly higher than that on the eastern region. Our research not only has strong practical significance but also contributes significantly to the literature on FinTech and sustainable development.

Environmental, social responsibility, corporate governance (ESG) are increasingly becoming the consensus of enterprises’ development. However, whether the ESG indices of enterprises can improve their performance on stock market is rarely studied. In order to examine the relationship between enterprise’s ESG indices and stock market performance, and to further explore the heterogeneity impact of stock market performance on the enterprises’ ESG indices in different ownership backgrounds, we conducted an empirical analysis based on China’s A-share listed companies. The empirical results show that there is a positive correlation between enterprise’s ESG indices and its stock market performance. Further analysis indicates that, the impact of ESG indices on non-state-owned enterprises is greater than that on state-owned enterprises, and the stock market performance of the secondary industry is much more affected by ESG indices than that of the tertiary industry. Finally, from three aspects including information disclosure, policy protection, transformation and upgrading, recommendations are proposed on the future direction of China’s ecological civilization construction and sustainable development of enterprises.