Being a developing country, the evaluation of Chinese circular economy should have its particular crite- rion that suits for specific national conditions. With the growth of economy, Chinese environmental loads should be permitted to increase at an appropriate speed. Based on this concept, this paper divides the process of evaluation into two parts which include evaluation of development level and evaluation of development performance. Firstly, this paper sets up a reference system which includes Zaozhuang City of Shandong Province, Jiaozuo City of Henan province, Shizuishan City of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and China that is regarded as a region respectively, analyzes the development level of circular economy of coal resource cities based on the evaluation indicator of ecological efficiency, and puts forward the future direction of circular economy of coal resource cities. Secondly, based on C Model of Circular Economy, this paper constructs the measurement model of development perform- ance in which study regions are analyzed in a particular period that is from 2000 to 2020, and evaluates the de- velopment performance of circular economy for study regions according to the relationship of growth multiples between economic scale and environmental loads. We can draw several main conclusions： firstly, the development pathways of all four study regions belong to type I[ which resource efficiency is preferred. Secondly, the com- prehensive energy consumption efficiencies of coal resource cities were left far behind by China＇s average level. Thirdly, the circular economies of all study regions have achieved remarkable progress. Fourthly, the development level of circular economy can be evaluated from two dimensions which consist of horizontal comparison method and vertical comparison method. Fifthly, C model is an appropriate development model that suits for Chinese na- tional conditions and could be selected as an important method to evaluate regional development performance of circular economy.
