Inclusive Green Growth and Regional Disparities: Evidence from China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review the paper. Overall an interesting paper but I have the following concerns:
I can gather from the paper that the process of economic development, green economy has become an inevitable model. In the course of economic development, ecological problems, human quality of life and other factors are equally emphasized. Therefore I would argue that the economic development at the expense of the environment can be avoided. However, China's economic system has undergone significant changes in the process of development, so there are obvious regional differences in the process of economic development (e.g., natural conditions, historical factors, environmental impact etc). This raises the following questions that need some considerations in improving the paper:
1. What and how measures should be taken (or at least to recognise) to solve the regional differences in the process of economic construction to ensure the sustainable economic development?
2. What are the roles of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in promoting better development and narrowing the regional economic gap between the east and the west?
References:
ICAEW (2019) Conference explores 'The debt of nation'. https://www.icaew.com/about-icaew/news/press-release-archive/2019-news-releases/regions-2019/conference-explores-the-debt-of-nations
Minhat, M. , & Dzolkarnaini, N. (2018, Nov 5). Islamic rule of law matters in Belt and Road Initiative. The Malaysian Reserve.
https://themalaysianreserve.com/2018/11/05/islamic-rule-of-law-matters-in-belt-and-roadinitiative-financing/
Zhang, J. J. (2022) Chinese Business and the Belt and Road Initiative - Institutional Strategies. Routledge
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Inclusive growth is of an extreme importance in the recent days. The authors chose an important topic, identified city clusters, which were analyzed in more detail on the basis of the newly proposed methodology, but the content of the article is not sufficiently fulfilled and some additions are proposed to improve its quality.
The introduction section of this paper is kind of insufficient. Please address and highlight the following terms clearly; problem statement, study contribution, assumption, significance, novelty, originality, and objectives.
Literature Review section needs to be developed significantly. You may discuss relevant papers which can improve the Literature Review (empirically and theoretically).
Discussion Section need further improvement. Please indicate how the results obtained are related to other studies performed, do they contradict them?
The conclusions section lacks an explanation of how the results presented contribute to better policy-making, what measures can be taken to improve the situation. Reading the article gives the impression that some statements are repeated only by paraphrasing them. There was a lack of clarity and specificity.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for the revision of the article. It is recommended for publishing. Remove track changes and make final improvements.
Author Response
Thank you for the comments. We have removed track changes and make final improvements regarding logic, spelling and grammar.
