A Research On The Relation Of Foreign Trade And Environmental Problem In China

Free trade may exert its influences on the environment from five aspects as follows: economical scale, industrial structure, market efficiency, production technology and environmental policy. The expansion of economical scale can raise the environmental pollution level; the improvement of market efficiency and the production technology and the severe environmental policy can then reduce the environmental pollution; the influence exerted by industrial structure on environment presents a dual character: if the pollution coming from the expansion department is bigger than that from the contraction department, the adjustment of industrial structure will increase the environmental pollution, otherwise it will reduce it.When the effect brought by the trade policy alone is better than the one brought by the environmental policy alone in controlling environmental pollution, the effect will be even better when the two are combined. As a result, using the trade policy alone to deal with environmental pollution is never a best approach.Trade-Related Environment Measures are divided into three categories basically: direct management, voluntary arrangement and economical encouragement.The trade effect of static environment policy can be analyzed in the following two aspects: environment comparison superiority and ecology dumping. The trade effect of unilateral dynamic environmental policy can be analyzed in the following four aspects: export cost effect, export innovation effect, trade inversion effect, and green trade barriers.The trade effect of bilateral dynamic environmental policy can be analyzed in three aspects. When both sides do not cooperate, and carry on the Cournot quantity competition, both of them would lower their environmental standard; when both sides do not cooperate, and carry on the Barrett price competition, both of them would raise their environmental standard; when both sides cooperate, their environmental standard would be improved unceasingly and their export would increase, but their environment quality would be invariable. Our foreign trade has developed rapidly, but the problem of environmental pollution has been very serious in recent years. As an empirical example, the effects of scale and structure aggravated environment pollution, while the effects of technology and market efficiency decreased environment pollution. Although environmental policy effect reduced environment pollution in the eastern region, it increased environment pollution in the central and western regions. Generally speaking, environmental effect had a positive effect on the eastern region, but it had a negative effect on the middle and western regions. So the phenomenon of "pollution heaven" existed in the mid-west area. As far as the environment effect of import and export structure of industry was concerned, different foreign trade of industries had different effect on Environment.Both the export cost effect and export innovation effect of environmental regulation existed in China. Although the import cost effect of environmental regulation existed in China, import innovation effect did not exist.The United Nations pays more attention to the international cooperation in dealing with the relations between trade and environment. OECD emphasizes four principles in dealing this relationship: expenses paid by the pollutant, coordination, national treatment and non-discrimination, as well as redemptive import duty and export discount.Many problems exist in China when dealing with the relations between trade and environment; for example, China respects foreign trade, but despises environment protection. In order to move our foreign trade and environment toward a positive cycle, the following three tasks should be finished: insisting on sustainable development, realizing the environmental costs internalization, and carrying on the effective international cooperation.