政商关系是能源环境效率的“奠基石”还是“绊脚石”?———理解“资源诅咒”的新视角

In the new era, constructing a novel form of pro-Qing state-business relations can aid in managing the government-enterprise relationship, motivating innovative drive among market players, and advancing China's high-quality development. Nonetheless, numerous impediments hinder resource utilization efficiency and enterprise innovation in development and utilization of natural resource. A key obstacle is the non-transparent relationship between the state and businesses, which has drawn consistent criticism. As a result, government, industry, and academic circles have continued to focus on growth, social development, and environmental governance in resource-rich regions. The "resource curse" can have a negative impact on green and sustainable development. Empirical evidence indicates that a negative association between resource abundance and sustainable development is quite common. This paper aims to demonstrate the impact of resource abundance on energy-environmental efficiency, using the mediating effect model from the perspective of state-business relations. The study constructs the energyenvironmental efficiency of 282 cities in China, using a non-radial distance function. The results indicate that natural resource abundance has a significant negative impact on regional energy-environmental efficiency. The increase in natural resource incentives for rent-seeking by local governments impairs state-business relations for inclusive growth, which curbs sustainable development. Moreover, the study finds heterogeneity in such associations across regions, the short and long terms, and resource types. The conclusions provide empirical evidence and policy guidance for improving energy and environmental efficiency in regions with abundant natural resources and establishing an effective state-business relationship. Compared with prior literature, the marginal contributions of this paper are as follows. First, it explains how natural resource abundance affects energy-environmental efficiency from the perspective of state-business relations, thereby enriching the research on the "resource curse". Second, it conducts an empirical analysis of the heterogeneity of the "non-Qing" state-business relation in the impact of natural resources abundance on energy-environmental efficiency, and compares the different effects of mineral resources and land resources, forest, and green space resources on energy-environmental efficiency. Third, the paper broadens the existing research by discussing the characteristics of resource abundance, state-business relations, and energyenvironmental efficiency from the perspective of spatial and temporal heterogeneity.