An Empirical Test of the Environmental Kuznets Curve in Guangdong Province, China

This paper investigates the relationship between water pollution and economic growth in four cities of Guangdong Province in China based on the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis, using urban data over 1990–2009. Waste water is used as the environmental indicator and per capita GDP is used as the economic indicator. Cubic function is used to formulate the relationship, with quadratic function and logarithmic function as comparison. The results show that the relationship between waste water and per capita GDP of Guangzhou city is inverse U-shaped, those of Shenzhen, Heyuan and Huizhou are not inverse U-shaped until 2009. Several reasons are listed for the phenomenon, among which the change of industrial structure is analyzed in detail.