China industrial environmental database 1998–2015

There has been a rapid-growing trend in studying China’s environmental problems in the past decade. However, the existing environmental statistics data are far from meeting researchers’ requirements. The biggest problem is that the official environmental statistics data are only provided at either regional level or sectoral level. Considering the huge heterogeneities in different regions and sectors, researchers are unable to conduct comprehensive policy evaluations. In this study, we constructed the time-series industrial environmental database for China (CIED) at both regional and sectoral level. The database includes totally 31 regions and four types of pollutants: chemical oxygen demand (COD), sulphur dioxide (SO(2)), ammonia-nitrogen (NH(3)-N), and nitrogen oxide (NO(X)). This study also clarifies several important concepts for researchers to better understand China’s official environmental statistics data.