Abstract:

The development of circular economy has become one of the most important strategies in the development of social economy in China at present.Yet the measurement of the development degree of circular economy is still a problem needing to be solved.This paper attempts to construct a set of ecoefficiency indicators to measure circular economy development in China according to the country's actual conditions,and referring to the ecoefficiency indicators in German environmental economic account.The set of ecoefficiency indicators are composed of 7 ones including construction land productivity,energy productivity,water productivity,raw material productivity,productivity of sulfur dioxide emission,productivity of waste water emission and productivity of domestic processed output (DPO),which are originated from economic indicators of gross domestic product (GDP)—4 indicators of resource demands including construction land,energy consumption,water consumption and raw material consumption,and 3 indicators of emissions involving volume of sulfur dioxide emission,volume of waste water emission and DPO.Then,the set of ecoefficiency indicators were applied to analyze the variation trend of ecoefficiency in China from 1990 to 2005.It is found that the ecoefficiency of every natural input factor shows a growing trend,while the growth rates simply lead to the weak separation of natural input factors from GDP to different degrees.Among all the growth rates of the ecoefficiency indicators,the growth rate of water productivity is the highest,while that of energy productivity is the lowest; on the other hand,growth rates of productivities of water consumption,DPO and construction land are higher than labor productivity in terms of employment,while the growth rates of productivities of sulfur dioxide emission,waste water discharge,raw material consumption and energy consumption are lower than labor productivity in terms of employment.

Key words: ecoefficiency indicators, China, circular economy measurement