Rapidly alleviating particulate matter pollution while maintaining high-speed economic development in the ?world ?s factory ?

Dongguan, a city at the heart of China's early reform and opening-up, has been known as the world's factory for being one of the largest manufacturing bases in the world. Combining rational socioeconomic developments with effective control policies on particulate matter (PM) pollution, Dongguan successfully transformed to win-win situation in both high-speed economic development and rapid air quality improvement from 2005 to 2017. In this study, we applied a STIRPAT (Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology) model to examine the relationships between PM pollution and the selected indicators of socioeconomic development in Dongguan. We found that the growths of proportion of secondary industry, low-grade road density and GDP per capita contribute greatly to the increase of PM pollution, while the growths of proportion of tertiary industry and high-grade road density could significantly slow down the increase of PM pollution. In addition, the policies for controlling PM pollution (e.g. retiring Yellow-Label cars, designating no burning zone and reforming industrial boilers) had great positive influence on PM reduction. However, PM pollution was negatively correlated with the number of automobiles probably due to the rapid and continuous improvements in the vehicle emission standard. Dongguan's experience in its pursuit of such win-win situations within a short period of time can provide valuable guidance for other cities in China as well as many undeveloped and developing cities worldwide.