The provinces in the CW-regions in China are relatively underdeveloped and have a strong desire for economic development, but they have also recognized their more fragile ecological environment and thus put forward green development strategies. This paper proposes that the CW-regions in China have the backwardness advantage of green development, which is of great significance for these regions to achieve the dual goals of economic catch-up and environmental protection. The conclusions form a useful supplement to the theory of sustainable development and the theory of backwardness advantage have important theoretical significance for solving the contradiction between economic catch-up and environmental pollution in underdeveloped regions and have important practical significance for the current economic reform of China, as well as important significance for the economic transformation and sustainable development in other developing countries. This paper finds that the CW-regions have comparative advantages in human capital, and the gap in GTP with the E-region is significantly lower than the gap in technological progress. This paper proposes that the comparative advantages of human capital in the CW-regions have prompted these regions to choose GTP more, and the choice of the direction of GTP has enabled these regions to obtain the backwardness advantage of green development. Through the sys-GMM estimation, the panel **data** of 29 provinces, as well as regional panel **data** in the mainland of China from 1995 to 2017, were used for empirical research. The results show the following: