From the perspective of environmental federalism, we extracted the environmental intention words from the work reports of China’s central and provincial governments through data mining, and used the instrumental variable method to conduct empirical experiments concerning the dispute between centralization and decentralization of environmental governance in the Chinese context. The results suggest that a negative correlation exists between the intention of the central government’s environmental governance and the provincial environmental quality, whereas a positive correlation exists between the intention of the provincial government and the provincial environmental quality. Our interpretation is that environmental centralization, coupled with its political, economic, and cultural factors, has converted provincial governments into supporters of environmental pollution, and that the central government’s ongoing environmental protection inspection campaign has forced the provincial government to be somewhat effective. We propose establishing Chinese-style cooperative federalism in environmental authority and not only centralizing or decentralizing in one direction. New transition mechanisms for the central government’s authority should be implemented, such as the environmental protection inspection groups mechanism and the ecological gross domestic product based political tournament.

To verify the impact mechanism between infrastructure capital investment and regional economic growth in China, this study first estimates production capital stocks of the infrastructure by Perpetual Inventory Method (PIM) based on a balanced panel dataset for 31 Chinese provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities covering 1993–2017, then analyses the important mediating role of regional innovation capacity in the relationship between infrastructure capital investment and regional economic growth in China. The empirical results indicate that infrastructure capital investment can effectively promote economic growth in China. Furthermore, through analysing the mediating impact mechanism, the infrastructure capital investment can indirectly affect regional economic growth through the regional innovation capacity. When fully considering the potential heterogeneity, the mediating effect of developed regions is more significant than that of underdeveloped regions, and such a mediating effect is increasing with deepening industrialization. Therefore, a harmonious relationship between infrastructure capital investment and economic growth can be achieved if policymakers attempt to arouse the positive mediating role of regional innovation capacity when formulating relevant policies.

Based on the sample data of 63 higher education institutions in Chongqing from 2013 to 2022, this paper adopts the entropy value method and the coupling coordination degree evaluation model to measure the coupling coordination degree and coupling mechanism between higher education and industrial economy in Chongqing. The results of the study found that: (1) the level of higher education in Chongqing shows a trend of rapid growth followed by basic stability and slight decline during the sample period, with the public undergraduate > the public specialized > the private undergraduate > the private specialized, and the central urban area > the new area of the city proper > the two clusters. Meanwhile, the level of industrial economy and its three subsystems in Chongqing also showed an upward trend, in which industrial efficiency > industrial scale > industrial structure. (2) The coupling coordination degree between higher education and industrial economy in Chongqing is at a medium level, with a phenomenon of high constant high and low constant low. It is characterized by an olive-shaped structure with fewer areas at the two ends, more areas in the middle for the quantity distribution, and one area higher than two clusters for the geospatial distribution. (3) There is a mutual promoting effect between higher education and industrial economy in Chongqing. The development of higher education, industrial economy, industrial efficiency, industrial scale, and industrial structure can improve the coupling coordination degree. Except for the industrial scale, other variables have a positive moderating effect on the coupling coordination degree. In addition, the heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive effect of higher education on the coupling coordination degree is higher in private institutions, undergraduate institutions, two clusters, and new area of the city proper.