The Study Of Carbon Emission Regulation And Trade Competitiveness Of Chinese Manufacturing Industries

After 30-year rapid and extensive development, the problem of Chinese carbon emission is getting increasingly serious. Therefore, it’s extremely urgent to attach importance on emission reduction abatement. In 2009, the government has promised that, in 2020, carbon emission per unit of output would be reduced by 40-45% compared with that in 2005, which demonstrates our attitude and resolution in environmental protection and harmonious development. Under such circumstances, the problem China confronting is more than just balancing between carbon emission abatement, but how to promote economic development and optimize social welfare under the limit of carbon emission regulation.Trade competitiveness is an essential part of economic development, which is of great significance to China. And thus, in this paper, we select carbon emission regulation and trade competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing industry as studying targets, aiming to explore the influencing effect and mechanism of carbon emission regulation on trade competitiveness. Finally, we try to find regulating policies and implementation schemes which conform to Chinese present development conditions, and thus step on a win-win road with regulating carbon emission and strong trade competitiveness.First, we refer to relevant literatures concerning carbon emission regulation and trade competitiveness, conclude three various viewpoints and then analyzes the reasons existing in such differences. Meanwhile, we make comparisons among general equilibrium models of economy under open environment, and summarize 17 key studying dimensions on general equilibrium models of opening containing environmental regulation factors.In this paper, we adopt relevant data between China and 77 trading partners in recent 20 years. FMOLS cointegration regression model is constructed to analyze the influence of relative carbon emission regulation on overall trade competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing industry. We find that, in recent 20 years, regulation of relative carbon emission promotes overall trade competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing industry.Through regression of bilateral panel data of China and other 32 trading partners during 1992 and 2011, the paper further studies the influencing effect of relative carbon emission regulation on overall trade competitiveness of various Chinese manufacturing industries. We find that the intensification of carbon emission regulation promotes export competitiveness of various Chinese manufacturing industries, the influencing degrees of which are different. The positive effect of carbon emission regulation on clean industry is comparatively greater, therefore, the intensification of carbon emission regulation directly contributes to structural transformation and upgrading of export of Chinese manufacturing industries.In this paper, we also discuss the export transformation effect of three distribution policies of carbon emission regulation among industries. we come to the conclusion, under the condition that the abatement input is the same, accumulative distribution of emission regulation based on per unit of emission benefits overall trade competitiveness development of manufacturing industries most; while average distribution of emission regulation based on per unit of emission contributes to structural upgrading of export of Chinese manufacturing industries greatest.On the basis of influencing effect study, we construct a general equilibrium model on environmental economy of an open and great nation, to analyze the influencing mechanism of two carbon emission regulation policies, which are implementation means with emission access standards and implementation means with carbon emission tax, and to analyze the selective mechanism of manufacturers on emission reduction methods under established carbon emission regulation policy. We find that the selection of manufacturers on emission reduction methods poses significant influence toward the influencing effect of emission policies on trade competitiveness. When the method of “end emission reduction treatment” is selected, the policy with carbon emission standard would weaken trade competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing industries, while policy with carbon emission tax would either hinder or promote trade competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing industries. While the method of “comprehensive emission reduction treatment during process” is adopted, policies with carbon emission standard and carbon emission tax would both contribute to trade competitiveness improvement of Chinese manufacturing industries. However, selection of emission reduction methods is determined by the relation among domestic technological level of emission reduction, elastic demands of various products, transformation capability of research and development and the tax rate of carbon emission enacted by such nation. Given financing cost, we find that the influencing effect of strict carbon emission regulation policy on trade competitiveness relies on the proportion of manufacturers with high financing cost and low financing cost. Meanwhile, if the regulation policy with emission tax is adopted by a nation, and the method of comprehensive treatment during process is not selected by all domestic manufacturers, under the condition that the total social input keeps the same, the government of such nation could set a balanced and optimal unit subsidy, to enhance its trade competitiveness under established carbon emission tax rate.