Decoupling of economic and carbon emission linkages: Evidence from manufacturing industry chains

Abstract

The high-quality development of the manufacturing industry is an important driving force for high-quality economic development. Its transformation and upgrade focus on promoting the modernization level of the manufacturing industry chain, strengthening the technological and economic linkages between upstream and downstream sectors. To explore the significance of industrial chain structure to the manufacturing economic linkage and carbon emission linkage, this paper compares and analysis the supply-driven and demand-pull industrial chain structure by using structural path analysis method. Under the proportion of 0.05%, the supply-driven industrial chain extends as far as the 8-layer in 2017, the peak value is the 4-layer industry chain, accounting for 31.1%, while it only extends to the 6-layer in 2002, and the peak value is the 3-layer. In 2017, the demand-pull industrial chain extended to the 7-layer, the peak value was the 4-layer industry chain, accounting for 45.3%, while in 2002, it only extended to the 6-layer. The results reveal that the industrial chain structure has been increasingly optimized from 2002 to 2017, whether it is the extension length, peak contribution rate, the contribution rate of high-layer, or the type and quantity of linkage sectors in industrial chain. It shows that the industrial chain structure is an important factor that causes the decoupling of economic and carbon emission linkages. The more optimized the industrial chain structure, the more sectors will generate economic benefits under unit carbon dioxide emissions, resulting in higher economic linkage and lower carbon emission linkage. Finally, from the optimization of industrial chain structure, it provides targeted policy suggestions for manufacturing industrial structure optimization in China.