Carbon emissions performance trend across Chinese cities: evidence from efficiency and convergence evaluation

Improving carbon emissions performance in Chinese cities is a crucial way to promote China's sustainable development. Employing the super-efficiency SBM model, we first estimate the carbon emissions efficiency (CEE) of 262 Chinese cities from 2003 to 2016. Then we study and explain the club convergence of CEE combining Markov and spatial Markov models and Moran's I test method. The results show that CEE has improved, especially for the western and northeastern cities. The efficiency of the northwest cities is low, while those of the central and coastal cities are relatively high. Club convergence exists in China's urban CEE. Cities with high- and low-level efficiency have much higher convergence levels. There are significant spatial agglomeration and spillover effects in China's urban CEE, contributing to the club convergence. Our analysis suggests that "cross-border" cooperation and communication between cities in different clubs should be highly promoted. Cities in high-level efficiency clubs are encouraged to play its role in radiating the lower-level cities. And the Chinese government is encouraged to strengthen carbon emissions mitigation in low-level areas through combining the green "Belt and Road" construction with the establishment of a national carbon market.