Research on the Policy Evolution of China’s New Energy Vehicles Industry

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I found your article very interesting.  However, the current presentation form doesn't give enough credit to your work.  I would suggest the following changes:

(1) Introduction

Start with the puzzle which is why an analysis of policies towards clean technologies is important, the lack in the literature of this type of analysis, and the role that China is playing in shaping this new industrial segment.

(2) conceptual framework (rather than a literature review)

(3) Methods - please explain a bit more the methodology, particularly an emphasis on the language of the policies analyzed.  Does the software address Chinese characters?

(4) The data. Please remove all paragraphs that are not exclusively the description of the data used.

(5) Results

Would it be possible to make a table with columns (Stage, Period, Emphasis (out of the word frequency), Type of policies).  It will make much easier to pick up the message than the long text with a lot of repetition.

(6) Your conclusions are more a discussion of findings, which should be brief and open to some interpretation from the authors, as well as to mention the limitations of the study.  

(7) You can add one paragraph of Conclusions

Figures and tables

I would ask you to re-do all the figures and tables as they are difficult to interpret. 

Figure 1, you could do without it.

Figure 2, for example, gives the impression that there are fewer policies in 2018 than in 2016, while I am assuming the policies are accumulative, and not excluding the previously issued ones.  The blocks on top of the figure are not clear.

Figure 3 is impossible to understand when printing in black and white - which most people do.

Table 1 - impossible to understand, please restructure it 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I would like to congratulate the authors with their paper: it is an interesting study and the chosen methodology is appropriate and apparently well performed. Yet, I think the paper might benefit from a few improvements:

1. My major critique is about the real aim of this study. It's quite clear what you do in the paper - and you describe it quite well - but it is less clear why you do it and what you want to obtain with this study. In other words, what is the scientific added value of this study? For example, can other countries learn from the development pathway of Chinese NEV's policy? Or is this pathway similar to other policies within the automotive industry or not? I think you should try to clearly state what can the scientific community learn from this study. 
2. In some way this article has a lot of narrative; to make it more appealing for the reader I would suggest to introduce a table or figure that shows how the different keywords (e.g. technology, power batteries,...) have changed importance across the four stages.
3. Section 6 should completely be rewritten. Honestly, what you have at the moment is not a discussion. It's just positioning your paper in the existing (Chinese) literature. You can use this part in the introduction to make clear the difference between your paper and existing studies. But I really miss a discussion at the end. Actually, you perform an amazing analysis, but what do we do with your results? See my critique in point 1. What is the added value for the scientific community and/or for policy makers?
4. Some minor issues concern:
   • Table 1 is difficult to read. Do you really need the classification in the third column? What does it add to your message? I think you just want to show how subsidies have changed across time.
   • I don't think Table 2 is really interesting for the reader; it does not really add anything to the text.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors

The manuscript presents an interesting comparison policy evolution of China's new energy vehicle industry between four stages and data obtained in the field. The majority of the deficiencies are related to the references.

 

1. Fig. 1. (a, b, c and d) should be divide into 4 separate figures. The description of fig. 1 is too long, some information e.g. "Full Cell Vehicles (FCV) is also a new type of NEV. FCV production is invisible due to the small amount" put it in text. Moreover, the legend of pictures should be bigger, and not in because the values are very difficult to be read

 

2. Fig. 3. (a, b, c and d) divide into 4 separate figures because is not readable, usually c and d pictures.
3. Make more visible description the most important objects on all of pictures like “Technology” Energy-saving”, “NEVs” Whole vehicle, Auto parts, Plan, Electric vehicle, For example you can use a shading to make it more visible or other methods of editing images.
4. Fig. 4. I am not fluent in Chinese names of provinces but province “Shannxi” is correct? Should not it be this “Shaanxi”?
5. Increase spacing between characters:

Line 46: (Fig.1).

Line 64: (2013)analyzed

Line 65: [21,22]

Line 67: policies[9].

Line 70 : al.(2014)

Line 111: [41,42]

Line 118: [29,45]

Line 140: [2, 76, 77]

Line 169: 2019.Three

Line 216: [69] (Fig.4).

Fig. 4. Public service +private purchase

Line 216: (Fig.4).

Line 219: Fig.3b

Line 265: Fig.4

Line 301: Fig.3d

Line 383: [5,10],

Line 430: MIIT.Operation

6. Line 185: At the beginning of the sentence before number “10” use word “Ten”, eg. “Ten policy texts were …”
7. Table 1 is too stretched vertically
8. Line from 285 to 294 are too stretched vertically olso
9. Use standardized descriptions in references for example:

Once you write – MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology).

and next differently, using the only abbreviation  - MIIT

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx