In the accelerating pursuit of sustainable development, China’s manufacturing sector stands at a critical crossroads, navigating the complexities of the global low-carbon transition. The pressing “double carbon” goals—aiming for peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060—pose profound challenges as well as unprecedented opportunities for industrial transformation. Recent scholarly inquiry has introduced a groundbreaking concept termed “carbon resilience,” which encapsulates the manufacturing industry’s inherent and adaptive capacities to effectively respond to both long-term decarbonization demands and short-term operational constraints. This nuanced perspective not only enriches the theoretical understanding of resilience but also offers a strategic framework poised to guide industrial policy and development in the face of climate urgency.
The essence of carbon resilience is intricately tied to three interdependent dimensions: stability, adaptation, and evolution. Stability refers to the manufacturing sector’s ability to maintain operational integrity and performance amid fluctuations or disturbances arising from environmental policies and market shifts. Adaptation denotes the industry’s capacity to modify processes, technologies, and organizational structures dynamically in response to emerging decarbonization requirements. Evolution, the most forward-looking dimension, focuses on the capability for long-term transformation, enabling industries to reinvent themselves fundamentally through innovation and strategic realignment. This triadic framework positions carbon resilience not as a static trait but as an endogenous dynamic capability crucial for sustainable industrial growth.
To quantify this complex construct, researchers have developed a comprehensive evaluation index system that captures both carbon resilience and the quality of industry development. Such multidimensional assessment tools are essential in dissecting the trajectory of China’s manufacturing sector as it concurrently pursues environmental sustainability and economic advancement. Longitudinal measurements reveal an encouraging trend: both carbon resilience and the quality of industry development exhibit upward momentum. Nonetheless, these trajectories are temporally heterogeneous, reflecting divergent underlying factors and challenges that unfold over different periods within the transition process. This temporal nuance highlights the necessity for adaptive policymaking that aligns with evolving industrial realities.
Beyond descriptive assessment, empirical analysis confirms a statistically significant positive correlation between carbon resilience and the quality of industry development. This finding corroborates existing literature that resilience mechanisms enhance industrial vitality and sustainability. However, the impact of carbon resilience is not uniform across all manufacturing sectors. Stratifying the analysis by carbon intensity reveals a gradient effect. High-carbon-emission industries experience the most pronounced benefits from enhanced resilience, followed by medium-carbon industries, with low-carbon sectors displaying the least sensitivity. These differentiated effects emphasize that policies fostering carbon resilience should be tailored to industry-specific characteristics, especially targeting sectors where decarbonization challenges are most acute.
Underlying this relationship is the pivotal role of resource allocation efficiency, which mediates the pathway through which carbon resilience translates into improved development quality. Resource allocation efficiency pertains to the optimal distribution and utilization of inputs such as capital, labor, and technology within the industry. The mediating effect model illuminates that carbon resilience facilitates higher-quality development primarily by enhancing the fluidity and effectiveness of resource deployment. Intriguingly, this mediation is especially significant in high-carbon emission industries, where improved resource allocation can directly influence emission reduction and productivity. Conversely, in medium- and low-carbon sectors, resource allocation efficiency does not serve as a mediating channel, implying that other mechanisms may underpin the relationship between resilience and development quality in these contexts.
The study’s findings herald vital implications for policymakers and industry stakeholders alike. For high-carbon sectors, investments and reforms that augment carbon resilience can yield disproportionate gains in development quality by refining resource allocation frameworks. Medium- and low-carbon industries, conversely, may require alternative strategic orientations that leverage innovation, market adaptation, or regulatory incentives beyond resource optimization. Thus, a nuanced, differentiated approach to industrial policy emerges as imperative, allowing for precise interventions calibrated to sectoral carbon intensity profiles and resilience dynamics.
Projecting into the near future, the research harnesses advanced system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) modeling to forecast carbon resilience and industry development quality through 2030. Contradicting the prevailing positive association, the forecast intriguingly suggests a potential negative effect of carbon resilience on industry development quality in the upcoming years. This counterintuitive trajectory signals caution against overemphasizing resilience without considering broader systemic and contextual factors. Echoing recent scholarly discourse, excessive focus on resilience, if unbalanced, might engender unintended consequences such as maladaptation, resource misallocation, or innovation stagnation, thereby impairing long-term sustainable development prospects.
Delving deeper, this anticipated inflection point underscores the inherent tension between immediate adaptive responses and strategic evolutionary shifts within the manufacturing landscape. While stability and short-term adaptation bolster resilience upfront, without a concerted pivot toward genuine evolution—encompassing breakthroughs in green technologies, circular economy integration, and structural innovation—the sector risks entrenching suboptimal paradigms. Consequently, cultivating evolutionary capacity emerges as the linchpin for harnessing resilience as a transformative force, ensuring resilience contributes positively to enduring quality improvements rather than transient gains alone.
From a technical standpoint, the construction of the evaluation index system involves rigorous selection and weighting of indicators reflecting environmental performance, operational flexibility, innovation capability, and resource management efficiency. Data sourced from diverse manufacturing subsectors undergo econometric scrutiny to isolate the independent and mediated effects of carbon resilience. The application of system GMM estimators accounts for potential endogeneity and dynamic interdependencies inherent in longitudinal panel data, enhancing the robustness of inference. These methodological advancements facilitate a granular understanding of how resilience interacts with multifaceted development outcomes under carbon transition pressures.
The differentiation of manufacturing industries based on carbon intensity further refines analytical precision. High-carbon emission industries often include sectors such as steel, cement, and chemical production, characterized by substantial energy consumption and emissions footprints. Medium-carbon industries occupy an intermediary space with moderate emission levels and transitional technology adoption rates, while low-carbon sectors typically entail advanced manufacturing with higher energy efficiency and cleaner process integration. This stratification enables targeted insights regarding resilience impacts and policy leverage points suitable to each group’s decarbonization stage and economic profile.
Moreover, the emergent insights into resource allocation efficiency’s mediating role compel industrial actors to rethink operational models. Enhancing allocation efficiency entails adopting advanced digitalization, real-time data analytics, and flexible supply chain configurations aligned with carbon reduction imperatives. These elements catalyze responsiveness and cost-efficiency, allowing high-carbon industries to pivot swiftly without compromising competitiveness. The absence of such mediation in lower-carbon industries suggests alternative value creation pathways, possibly emphasizing product differentiation, market expansion, or innovation ecosystems.
As China accelerates efforts toward green manufacturing, integrating carbon resilience into industrial development discourse signals a paradigm shift. The concept transcends traditional environmental compliance or isolated decarbonization projects, positioning resilience as a systemic capability encompassing risk management, adaptive innovation, and transformative evolution. This holistic approach aligns with global sustainability frameworks, seeking to harness manufacturing as a cornerstone for climate action while safeguarding economic vitality and social stability.
Nonetheless, the findings caution against simplistic resilience prescriptions. The forecasted potential downturn in the resilience-development quality relationship warns stakeholders against complacency and underscores the value of continuous empirical monitoring, scenario analysis, and adaptive governance. Policymakers must balance near-term flexibility enhancements with sustained investments in radical innovation and structural reforms, ensuring resilience evolves beyond reactive defense to proactive transformation.
In summary, advancing carbon resilience conceptualization and measurement illuminates critical pathways through which China’s manufacturing industry can navigate the low-carbon transition effectively. The interplay between resilience, resource allocation efficiency, and industry development quality varies significantly across carbon intensity tiers, mandating nuanced, evidence-based policy design. Foresight analyses reveal emerging complexities that caution against overreliance on resilience without calibrated strategic vision. This research thus enriches academic debate and offers practical, data-driven guidance to propel sustainable transformation at the heart of China’s industrial future.
As the global community watches China’s manufacturing evolution, this integrative perspective on carbon resilience not only informs national strategies but also resonates internationally, providing a replicable analytical and policy framework for manufacturing sectors worldwide facing analogous decarbonization imperatives. The quest for sustainable, high-quality industrial development in an era of climate urgency demands such visionary scholarship and pragmatic application.
Subject of Research: The carbon resilience of China’s manufacturing industry and its impact on the quality of industry development in the context of the low-carbon transition.
Article Title: How can China’s manufacturing industry achieve better development? A carbon resilience perspective based on the system GMM model.
Article References:
Liang, L., Guo, Y., Li, Y. et al. How can China’s manufacturing industry achieve better development? A carbon resilience perspective based on the system GMM model. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 12, 1202 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05564-7
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