The impact of central government environmental inspection on the trade-off between economic growth and environmental improvement in China

How to handle the relationship between economic development and environmental protection, achieving a positive interaction between the two, is a practical issue faced by Chinese government today. This paper incorporates dual objectives into the same analytical framework through theoretical models and empirical analysis. We find that, overall, local governments can achieve dual goals. Furthermore, this sustained positive impact is also influenced by some factors leading to a mid-term negative rebound, such as the timing of the green transformation, the strength of regulation methods during the inspection periods, and the management of local governments during non-inspection periods. Finally, the central government environmental inspection exhibits multidimensional heterogeneity of this trade-off in terms of time, region, and industry. The middle region has achieved the dual goals better in the long term, and the west region has achieved the dual goals better in the medium term.