Abstract
After the reform and opening up, China has developed into a world factory due to the bias of Chinese policies, the need for urban development, and the limitations of science and technology. As a world factory, on the one hand, it expanded the scale of China's economy, raised the level of science and technology, and improved the standard of people's daily life. On the other hand, China's technology level was backward at the beginning of the reform and opening-up period, and the world countries in a competitive relationship could not give China a high-end technology level. Most of the developed countries only transferred their rough industries to China, which led to the "three highs and one low" pattern of China's economic development. The efficiency of resource utilization is very low, which not only wastes resources but also causes great deterioration of the environment. Based on China's environmental development problems, this article summarizes and analyses the relationship between economic development and environmental pollution through the perspective of EKC curve research. Then, using the data of economic growth target published by government work report of 230 prefecture-level cities from 2004 to 2014 collected by hand, the constraint of economic growth target is described from three dimensions. In particular, the study of economic growth target constraints is extended in terms of the portrayal of the characteristics of soft and hard constraints of economic growth targets. Finally, combining with the normative research method, feasible countermeasures are proposed for developed cities as well as less developed cities, providing new insights for the coordinated development of the urban environment and economy in China.