Abstract
Temporal index decomposition analysis and spatial index decomposition analysis were applied to understand the driving forces of the emissions embodied in China’s exports and net exports during 2002–2011, respectively. The accumulated emissions embodied in exports accounted for approximately 30% of the total emissions in China; although the contribution of the sectoral total emissions intensity (technique effect) declined, the scale effect was largely responsible for the mounting emissions associated with export, and the composition effect played a largely insignificant role. Calculations of the emissions embodied in net exports suggest that China is generally in an environmentally inferior position compared with its major trade partners. The differences in the economy-wide emission intensities between China and its major trade partners were the biggest contribution to this reality, and the trade balance effect played a less important role. However, a lower degree of specialization in pollution intensive products in exports than in imports helped to reduce slightly the emissions embodied in net exports. The temporal index decomposition analysis results suggest that China should take effective measures to optimize export and supply-side structure and reduce the total emissions intensity. According to spatial index decomposition analysis, it is suggested that a more aggressive import policy was useful for curbing domestic and global emissions, and the transfer of advanced production technologies and emission control technologies from developed to developing countries should be a compulsory global environmental policy option to mitigate the possible leakage of pollution emissions caused by international trade.
Highlights
China has achieved rapid economic growth since its opening-up, especially after it became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001
Single region environmental input-output (SREIO) models were built for China and its major trade partners containing 15 aggregative sectors each based on the World Input–Output Database (WIOD) [37]
The balance of emissions embodied in trade (BEET) is used to denote the difference between the emissions embodied in the imports and in the exports [38], which is similar to the “emission trade balance” (ETB) defined by Arto et al [39]
Summary
China has achieved rapid economic growth since its opening-up, especially after it became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. During the 10-year period from 2002 to 2011, which roughly corresponds with the 10th and 11th Five Year Plan (FYP) periods, China’s exports and imports increased by 4.9-fold and 4.7-fold, respectively. International trade accelerated economic development, and China’s gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual growth rate of 10.3%. Nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions continued to increase along with a rapid growth in GDP during those years. The discharge volumes of SO2 and NOx were 22.2 million tons and 20.4 million tons in 2011, respectively, which were even larger than the total emissions of each of these pollutants in the European Union countries [4]
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