Sustainable development trial undertaking: Experience from China's innovation demonstration zones

In December 2016, China proposed creating about ten sustainable development demonstration zones to create a batch of replicable and extendable demonstration models to fully realize the 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs) and provide a reference for similar regions of emerging economies. It has now approved six cities that act as green and low carbon lifestyle laboratories. However, very few documents quantitatively evaluate this policy's natural, economic, and social impact. This article comprehensively uses dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) methods and input-output methods to portray the urgency of sustainable development in China. This article sets the sustainable indicator system for the approved six cities and sets scenario simulations based on transformation needs for quantitative evaluation. The results show that demonstration zones policies would lead to a decline in the output of heavily polluting industries. However, in China's current coal-dominated energy structure, the degree of positive impact on the growth of clean industry output would be less than the intensity of the impact on heavily polluting industries. •This study is one of the very few empirical literatures on the impact of demonstration zones in China's sustainable development agenda.•It plays a leading role for emerging economies in deciphering major social contradictions and implementing sustainable development goals.•It provides a Chinese test bed for global sustainable development for the emerging economies.