Evaluation of the Level of Sustainable Development of Provinces in China from 2012 to 2018: A Study Based on the Improved Entropy Coefficient-TOPSIS Method

Based on the definition and implication of sustainable development, this paper first constructed an evaluation indicator system for the sustainable development level of provinces in China, and performed a scientific evaluation on the sustainable development level based on official statistics from 2012 to 2018 by using the improved Entropy Coefficient-TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution) method. The evaluation results showed that the eastern region of China has the highest level of sustainable development, with its two municipalities directly under the central government, Beijing and Shanghai, achieving the full score of 1.0000 in all evaluations, both ranking first among all the provinces. There were significant differences in the level of sustainable development across provinces in the central region, which were comparatively weaker in terms of environmental sustainability and science and technology sustainability, with four provinces’ evaluation scores below 0.5000. The provinces of the western region had comparatively lower levels of sustainable development, with six of the provinces ranking among the bottom ten in the overall sustainability score. In the northeast region, Liaoning had the highest overall sustainable development level, ranking ninth in the country, with an evaluation score of 0.7726; however, there were large differences across the region, with the other two provinces ranking 19th and 21th, respectively, in the overall sustainability score. Based on the research findings, this paper has provided relevant policy recommendations for China to further improve the sustainable development level of various provinces in the future.