The Environmental Kuznets Curve and Pollution Haven hypotheses have been verified by many studies. However, there is still no consensus on whether China’s situation is consistent with the abovementioned hypotheses. Therefore, to investigate whether China’s development aligns with the Environmental Kuznets Curve and Pollution Haven hypotheses, this study considered provincial panel data from 1996 to 2015 and used the fixed effects panel data partially linear additive model, which integrates economic growth and foreign direct investment into the same framework, to investigate their impact on carbon emissions. The results revealed that there exists a reverse U-shape relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions, and an inverted N-shaped relationship between foreign direct investment and carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, the results revealed that energy consumption has an accelerating effect on the production pace of carbon dioxide emissions. The upgrading of industrial infrastructure, technology diffusion, and trade liberalization can contribute to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Additionally, this study proposes the following future research directions. First, considering the regional differences in China, the conclusions of this study should be re-examined by grouping different regions. Secondly, the formation mechanism of the inverted N-type relationship between foreign direct investment and carbon emissions is also an issue that requires further discussion. Finally, a comparative study between developed and developing countries is needed to test and verify the universality and adaptability of the conclusions drawn from this study.

Introduction

Global warming is a serious threat to human survival and development (Bakaki and Bernauer, 2018; Chen et al., 2018). Moreover, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are the major contributor to global warming (Xu and Lin, 2016). Therefore, the international community is also increasingly more concerned with minimizing carbon emissions (Mundaca and Markandya, 2016). As the largest carbon emitter, China must become more energy efficient and reduce its carbon emissions, under the pressure exercised by the international community (Li et al., 2018). In response to the Paris Accord, China proposed an agenda for reducing the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. This reduction will be 60%e 65% less that the emission amounts in 2005 (Wang et al., 2018). Because of its rapid development for more than 30 years, China has become the second largest economy and contributed toward achieving a global economic growth of 25% (Jin et al., 2016). China’s excellent development prospects have attracted a large number of foreign capital (Kolstad and Wiig, 2012; Dong et al., 2018). However, with rapid economic growth and the influx of foreign capital, the amount of carbon dioxide emissions has also rapidly increased (Jiang et al., 2018). By 2015, China’s volume of carbon emissions accounted for 28% amongst the global volume (Zhang and Zhang, 2018). Undoubtedly, an immense amount of carbon emissions poses a challenge to the sustainable development of China’s economy (Fufa et al., 2018; Guerrero and Munoz, 2018).