Development of New Energy Vehicles in Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Under the Carbon Neutrality Policy in China

Introduction

The ecological environment is the foundation of human survival and development, and it refers to the sum of human society and the various natural factors that surround it (Wang & Zhao, 2016). China’s economy has experienced great development since its reformation and opening to international markets. For instance, since 1978, China's economy has witnessed significant growth and its gross domestic product (GDP) now ranks second in the world (Bamisile et al., 2020; Zhang & Hao, 2020). Overall, China’s GDP trajectory shows some rapid growth from about 364.5 billion Yuan in 1978 to about 14700 billion Yuan as of 2020. The country’s contribution to the global GDP over the same period, also shows remarkable growth, with an increase from about 1.75% in 1978 to about 17.4% in 2020 (NBS, 2020). These and other indicators qualify China as the largest exporter and 33rd most complex economy in the world (Bamisile et al., 2020).

However, such economic growth does not come on a silver platter; with energy consumption in China's economy expecting to increase by 28% - 29% from 2017 to 2040 (Bamisile et al., 2020; Kennedy et al., 2020), many environmental problems are inevitable. Some obvious impacts of such growth and industrialisation, include severe environmental pollution, excessive resources waste and deterioration of ecological environment (Yang, 2013; Fan et al., 2019). On the other hand, environmental hazards increase great concerns due to the ripple effects of the resultant problems caused by economic development, such as air pollution (PM2.5), higher carbon emission (CO2 emission) (Chien et al., 2021a; Chien et al., 2021b; Li et al., 2021b), and greenhouse gas (GHG) (Bamisile et al., 2020; Malla & Brewin, 2020). As part of the country’s mitigation strategies, the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China attached great importance to ecological construction (Wu et al., 2020a; Wu et al., 2020b), which meant a turning point in the process of China’s ecological protection and the stricter ecological supervision systems.