Broadband China and Urban Environmental Outcomes: An Audit of Implementation, Outcome Measures, and Digital Readiness

Vollständiger Abstract

Worum geht es in dieser Arbeit?

Studies of Broadband China reach different environmental conclusions, but they do not always measure the same policy implementation or environmental outcome. We test whether conclusions survive changes in implementation, outcome, denominator, weighting, and baseline city capacity. We link the 2014–2016 cohorts to prefecture-level panels, using administrative outcomes through 2019 and annual PM2.5 through 2023. First, designation does not establish a reliable physical-network first stage: access ports rise, but the estimate fails the pretrend test, while adjusted fiber models fail overlap or balance diagnostics. Second, on the same 2427 city-years, industrial wastewater rises by 22.26%, whereas sulfur dioxide, smoke/dust, and PM2.5 remain imprecise. On the adjusted sample, the wastewater estimate falls from 16.45% to an imprecise 7.69% after cross-fitted selection adjustment. Third, an exploratory within-sample analysis finds that a one-standard-deviation increase in baseline digital readiness is associated with an 18.76% lower treated-versus-control smoke/dust change (95% confidence interval: −30.54% to −4.98%), although mechanism tests do not survive multiplicity adjustment. These findings do not imply that broadband has no environmental effects. They show instead that any such claim must be tied to verified implementation, the environmental measure, and prepolicy city capacity.