Evaluation of Sustainable Development Ability of China's Yangtze River Economic Belt

Sustainable development is a critical theory and strategy to promote the development of the regional economy. The sustainable development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YEB) has essential significance for the development of China. In this paper, 11 provinces and cities in the YEB are taken as the research object, and the analytic hierarchy process is used to construct an evaluation index system for the sustainable development capacity of the YEB from the three aspects of the economy, society, and ecology, and quantifies the sustainable development capacity of the 11 provinces and cities. The results show that the overall level of sustainable development capacity of the YEB in China is low, the gap between provinces and cities is large, and the differences between provinces and cities with high levels of sustainable development are more pronounced. The economic, social, and ecological subsystems imply that scientific research and technological progress are essential components of the sustainable development index of the YEB and one of the essential means to promote the sustainable development of the YEB in the future. The economic development level, urbanization rate, and greening rate of provinces and cities also play an essential role.