| 内容提要: |
Environmental pollution and health challenges in China have attracted global attention. For example, in 2010, PM2.5 pollution alone was linked to 1,200,000 premature deaths in China (1). Moreover, PM2.5 pollution produced in China is linked to more than 64,800 premature deaths in regions other than China (2). Environmental protection enterprises are the most direct way to deal with environmental pollution by means of treating pollutants in air, soil and water. China's environmental protection industry has developed rapidly in recent years. Statistics show that since 2011, the Chinese environmental protection industry has been growing at an average annual rate of 26.9% in terms of output value. In 2017, the sales revenue of the environmental protection industry reached US$ 200 billion, making it a "billion-level" industry in China (3). The number of environmental protection companies maintained a rapid growth due to the attention from both governments and public. According to the “Fourth National Survey on the Basic Situation of Environmental Protection-related Industries” in China, the distribution of environmental protection-related industries in China shows a high degree of coincidence with the spatial distribution of China's economic development. The overall distribution characteristics of "one belt and one axis" are preliminarily formed, i.e. the "coastal development zone" around the Bohai Sea, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, and the "development axis along the Yangtze River to Sichuan" in the central provinces from Shanghai to the Sichuan. |