There are many ways to assess how well a nation is doing, however most of these indices do not provide a concise, yet complete evaluation of a nation's state because they only rely on a single indicator. Composite indices are constructed from several indicators and can relay a simple yet comprehensive picture.
In 2016, China had the 2nd highest nominal GDP in the world. However, this explosive growth has come with a price. For several years, China has produced the most carbon dioxide emissions. China also has highly divided subregions and upon further investigation. The subregions are affected highly disproportionately. This leads to the following questions: Is China’s growth sustainable? Should it be a model for other developing nations? How does society’s well-being play a role in this explosive economic development and environmental deterioration?
In this talk I will present the indices and metrics I developed for measuring the sustainability for China at the province level, using the sustainability window analysis and principal component analysis. Ultimately, this approach can be applied to other countries to assess the sustainability of various regions.