Abstract
China is in a strategic phase of an industrial green transformation. Industrial air pollution is a key environmental target for governance. Because import trade is a core channel through which advanced environmental protection technology is absorbed, the question of whether technology spillovers brought about by import trade can reduce industrial air pollution emissions is a topic worth exploring. This paper uses a generalized spatial two-stage least-square (GS2SLS) model to explore the impact of import trade technology spillovers on industrial air pollution emission intensities using panel data from 30 provinces and cities between 2000 and 2017. Economic scale, industrial structure, and technological innovation are used as intermediary variables to test whether they play mediating effects. The results show that: (1) capital and intermediate goods technology spillovers directly reduce industrial air pollution emission intensity and (2) import trade technology spillovers indirectly reduce emission intensities by expanding economic scale, optimizing industrial structure, and enhancing technological innovation through mediating variables. Furthermore, industrial structure optimization and technological innovation have the largest mediating effects on industrial SO2, while economic expansion has the most significant mediating effect on industrial smoke and dust. The mediating effects of technology spillovers from intermediate goods exceed those of capital technology spillovers. Finally, industrial air pollution emission intensity demonstrates both spatial agglomeration and time lag effects. Environmental regulations and energy structure are shown to increase industrial air pollution emissions, while urbanization and foreign direct investment reduce industrial air pollution. Based upon these research results, some pertinent policy implications are proposed for China.
Highlights
Since reforming and “opening up” the economy in the late 1970s, China’s industrial development has made remarkable achievements
Having confirmed the existence of spatial autocorrelation, a GS2SLS method was used to analyze the effect of technology spillovers of import trade on industrial air pollution in
For SO2 emissions, its intensity is reduced by 0.15% and 0.04% based upon technology spillovers due to capital and intermediate goods import increases of 1% in the previous year, respectively
Summary
Since reforming and “opening up” the economy in the late 1970s, China’s industrial development has made remarkable achievements. Air pollution control technology comes from domestic research and development and relies on importation of advanced clean production technology. Based upon the structure of imported goods, according to the 2017 China Green Trade Development. The spillovers of environmental protection technology brought about by import trade can have a profound impact on the improvement of China’s atmospheric environmental quality. In this critical period of industrial green development transition and import trade expansion stage for China, the relationships between import trade technology spillovers and industrial air pollution emissions are worthy of further research
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