Green production and trade in the global-local system: Taking China as an example

Abstract

After facing climate change and other environmental problems, many countries have prioritized research on environmental protection. However, there is still a lack of relevant research in the field of regional green production and trade systems. From the perspective of the production side, this study examined the regions' abilities of constructing a green production and trade system on the local, inter-provincial, and international levels. The Epsilon-based model-data envelopment analysis method was used to measure the local, inter-provincial, and international green production and trade system efficiency of 30 Chinese provinces during 2012–2017. The measurement considered the embodied emissions of eight greenhouse and polluting gases, including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, chemical oxygen demand, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, ammonia nitrogen, flue dust, and carbon dioxide. The results showed that for most regions, the local green production efficiency was higher than the average efficiency value of the inter-provincial green production system, whereas the inter-provincial efficiency was higher than the average efficiency of the global green trade system. Factors, such as economic level, industrial structure, government's administrative capacity, technological investment, energy structure, urbanization level, and external dependence level affect the construction of the local, inter-provincial, and international green production and trade systems at different levels in the global-local system. The research results are helpful for understanding, in theory and from multiple spatial scales, the capacity, and major problems of the regions in constructing green production and trade systems and promote the construction of a more scientific and reasonable regional green production and trade system in practice.